nothin Mayor Urges Patience During Post-Storm… | New Haven Independent

Mayor Urges Patience During Post-Storm Clean-Up Tree-age

Ko Lyn Cheang photo.

Justin Elicker.

Tropical Storm Isaias knocked more power out of more New Haven homes than Hurricane Sandy, forcing the city Thursday to do triage — or tree-age — to get streets cleared.

Mayor Justin Elicker and director of emergency operations chief Rick Fontana offered an update on the post-storm clean-up efforts during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

The city is prioritizing urgent needs, such as clearing impassable streets and responding to power outages faced by elderly and disabled individuals. For now it is de-prioritizing clearing branches on sidewalks or partially-blocked roads.

At the peak of outages, 11,500 homes lost power. In contrast, Hurricane Sandy caused 5,500 power outages. Elicker said the wind damage to power lines and trees caused by Isaias was very significant”.

The city experienced 400 wire-in-tree” incidents.

As of late Thursday afternoon, there were still approximately 5,900 outages across the city.

When you look at the different areas, this isn’t one storm that impacted a particular area. It impacted the entire city of New Haven,” Fontana said from the city’s emergency operations center in the basement of 200 Orange St. Every corner of the city was impacted at the highest level.”

Behind him, three maps were displayed on large screens showing the spread of power outages reported to UI and streets with reported blockages. Fontana credited the virtual emergency operations system, designed by New Haven-based software company Veoci, with enabling them to have an efficient response during emergencies such as this one.

I understand a number of folks are pretty frustrated. We have been working very hard to reduce those numbers of outages and already brought them down significantly,” said Elicker. Our priority has been public safety first, clearing of roads so emergency vehicles to get to, then tackling power outages that affect the most number of people.”

Justin Elicker and communications chief Gage Frank.

He said that as the number of outages becomes lower, it will take longer to address the many remaining smaller incidents around the city.” Elicker said he was reluctant to provide an exact time frame on how long it would take to restore power to the entire city. He noted that it took seven to ten days to do so during Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Irene.

We are asking people to be very patient,” said Elicker. The city’s crews are working around the clock, he said.

The priority for the city’s clean-up crew now is to clear the six remaining impassable, blocked streets, which are those that have both ends blocked off or are blocked on one side with the dead end on the other. Houses on these streets are inaccessible to emergency and public safety vehicles, and therefore have to be cleared as soon as possible.

They are located at Edwards and St. Ronan, Willow and Livingston, a section of Cleveland Road, Shelton and Bassett, Clay Street between James and Monroe Streets, and Rosette and Hurlburt Streets, which is partially blocked.

By Friday morning, all the streets will be open, said Fontana. The overnight clean-up crews will work all night to clear the blockages.

Fire captain Dave Vargas supervises a “make safe” crew at Colony Road Thursday.

Many other streets are partially obstructed but because there is a way to access them, clearing those streets will be lower on the city’s clean-up priority list.

One hundred forty streets have been opened up so far due to the work of the parks and public works departments in collaboration with United Illuminating.

During the storm, the Bella Vista senior housing complex, with about 2,000 residents, lost power. The city was able to work with UI to restore power within two hours, said Elicker. The port also lost power, so there was a brief fuel disruption, but electricity was restored quickly.

Residents who lack food access can reach out to the city’s Covid-19 food resources programs. The city is providing one-gallon ice bags for people who need to cool their medication, such as insulin. Individuals with medical emergencies should call 911. Those facing power-related issues or see power lines down should call the city’s emergency operation center at 203 – 946-8221, he said.

Fire Chief John A. Alston, Jr. said that the department responded to 153 incidents of trees that had fallen down on property and people, as well as incidents involving live wires.

Tree clean-up at Colony Road Thursday.

Many residents have taken to operating their own electrical generators, Alston said. Some of them are being jury-rigged, some of them are exceeding their capacity, some of them are overheating,” he said. Alston noted that generators can produce carbon monoxide. So if people should bring them indoors to their garages, they must have their carbon monoxide detectors on to prevent themselves from being poisoned.

Working Around The Clock”

Inside the emergency operations center.

Fontana said that multiple crews and at times, cranes, are being deployed to clean up blocked streets. These trees are as big as houses,” he said.

The storm brought with it two unprecedented moves by the city’s emergency operations team and UI. For the first time, the electric utility company had power restoration crews working 24/7, operating through the night with just a light on the service trucks to guide their work.

Secondly, the city’s emergency operations center took the lead this time on directing and coordinating the movement of UI’s power restoration trucks. This system, Fontana explained, allows the city to perform triage by prioritising urgent actions and deprioritising less urgent ones. Fontana said they made this decision after lessons learned during the experiences of Hurricane Sandy and Irene, where they allowed UI to go where they wanted to go.

Cases of power outages that have been prioritized include a disabled woman in Newhallville who lost power, and could not leave her house until it was restored, as well as a monster tree” leaning on electrical wires beside a Greater New Haven water pollution control authority pump station at 1004 Quinnipiac Avenue that pumps millions of gallons of water for the region.

If that tree comes down and takes out a generator, you know what we call that? A shitty day,” said Fontana.

Rick Fontana.

The city in collaboration with UI has one make safe” crew, which shuts off power in live wires so that clean-up and power restoration teams can safely work on it. There also are four crews working on power restoration in the city and five vehicles working on Route 34, which suffered major damage during the storm.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced Thursday afternoon that he has activated the Connecticut National Guard to assist utility companies in power restoration efforts. Elicker said at the press conference that he does not know yet about how the state-deployed teams will help the city of New Haven.

The city’s five libraries are open during regular hours, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for residents who need to charge their phones or cool off. On Thursday afternoon, Stetson Branch Manager Diane Brown had already prepared a corner of the library for people whose homes have lost power and who need to charge their phones. She emphasized that they are practicing strict cleaning procedures and preventing people from browsing books, so as to reduce transmission of the virus.

So far no one has needed to come in. Brown and her team have been walking around the Dixwell neighborhood to inform residents that they can enter the library to charge their phones. Thursday afternoon, she visited a nearby skatepark to tell the kids there that the library was open for the emergency. 

Diane Brown.

The other New Haven public library branches were more heavily utilized, according to their branch managers, with 20 people visiting the Wilson library in the Hill, seven people visiting the Mitchell library in Westville, one person visiting the Fair Haven library, and 20-something people visiting the main library in downtown New Haven. 

The library is happy to step in and help deal with a critical problem the city is facing now,” said John Jessen, the city librarian.

When asked what the city plans to do in the long term to reduce its vulnerability to power outages during hurricanes and tropical storms, Elicker said that, according to his understanding, moving power lines from above ground to underground will involve a prohibitive” cost. He said the city plans to be more proactive about tree trimming, which can help to mitigate some of the damage caused by fallen tree branches during major storms.

For now, the mayor has asked residents to be patient and brace for a days’-long recovery effort.

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