NORWALK, Conn. Jerry Rial has been around, and he's impressed by what he's seen of the Connecticut Light & Power workers in Norwalk. "They've got a lot of excellent linemen out here that are really good," said the tree man from Detroit, visiting Connecticut for the first time to assist in the cleanup of Hurricane Irene.
Rial works for Detroit Edison and is periodically dispatched to other areas after major storms to assist the locals in restoring power. He's heading for North Carolina next. "There's no time set on it, but things are going pretty smooth," he said Friday as he watched a lineman restore power to one of the last areas of Norwalk that remained powerless after Irene blasted through, the end of Soundview Avenue near Brien McMahon High School.
On Friday evening, the CL&P outage map reported that 99 percent of its Norwalk customers were back to enjoying their televisions, hot water and light. The path to restoring Norwalk to normality was different than after past storms, according to Department of Public Works Director Hal Alvord. This time, city officials decided where crews would go, not CL&P officials far from Norwalk.
Mayor Richard Moccia said priorities were set by safety concerns as well as need. "We try to prioritize by dangerous areas, by how many people are in an area," he said. "(We're) whittling it down; there's still a few isolated places."
After the storm of March 2010, city officials met with CL&P representatives repeatedly to develop a plan based on where the city saw shortfalls, Alvord said. Before that, "CL&P coordinated and directed their power restoration teams and their tree teams from their storm center," Alvord said.
The city disagreed with the power company's approach. "Their focus is on getting as many customers returned to power as possible," Alvord said. "But that is not the No. 1 priority. I understand that customers are screaming at them, the DPUC is screaming at them, but that is not the number one priority. The number one priority is getting the roads open so emergency response vehicles can get through."
Norwalk has worked with a CL&P liaison throughout the recovery process. On Tuesday, that meant that the one line crew provided to the city in the morning had grown to two line crews and a tree crew by the end of the day.
A crew that showed up Thursday night on Soundview to replace a broken pole seemed surprised to be there. They had been in Easton on a job, they said, on their way to pick up a pole, when they were diverted to Norwalk. "Someone must have complained enough," one of them said.
It was their first trip to Norwalk. Moccia said the city made the neighborhood a priority because there were 300 to 350 customers out, "a lot for one area" at the time. The proximity of Brien McMahon High and Brookside Elementary School figured into the equation as well, as did the fact that "Soundview fed into some other streets off Highland that had no power."
Moccia thinks the city did well. "Overall I gave us a B+," he said. "I continue to say the DPW, Michele (DeLuca, emergency management director), the fire, the police performed above and beyond, and we did a great job."
Alvord said the mayor did a good job working with CL&P on the recovery. "Our mayor has, I think rightfully, not slammed CL&P publicly," Alvord said. "If he's got any concerns about the response, he's expressed those privately. It's not been in the press and all of that kind of stuff. You can't call somebody a blithering idiot publicly and then expect them to want to cooperate with you."
Moccia expressed some frustration with CL&P. "I can't be responsible for all the mistakes CL&P made," Moccia said. "That's not my call. We had great cooperation from the line people and from the emergency center. But if the powers that be didn't give them enough crews, that's beyond their call, my call."
Do you agree with Mayor Moccia's B+ assessment?
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