Branford Bouncing Back

Storm Irene was their teacher, and she taught Connecticut’s power companies and its shoreline towns well.

By the time Sandy the Hurricane hit the Connecticut shoreline over a year later, Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) had crews on the ground ready to go. They also learned they had to work better with local public works departments, that is, power can’t be restored if wires and trees are mangled together in the roads. During Irene there was a great deal of confusion about who did what. Now it is better. 

“We’ve made significant progress working closely with the state and municipalities to clear blocked roads and remove electrical hazards,” said Bill Quinlan, CL&P Senior Vice President of Emergency Preparedness.  “Today, we’re focused on completing damage assessment, using patrolers on the ground and in helicopters, so that we can provide a system-wide restoration projection Thursday.” 

First Selectman Unk DaRos said in an interview that one of his top priorities was that “CL&P crews will work with public works crews to get our roads open. And they did. There were 11 major road closings,” he said after 83 trees fell across roads. During Irene there was confusion as to who would do what.  By late yesterday all the roads were open.

At the Emergency Operations Center, DaRos spoke to the crew working the computers and answering phones. Capt. Geoffrey Morgan, the Police Department’s Director of Emergency Operations, was in the room, discussing an issue with Dagmar Ridgway, director of the senior center. (pictured) 

In an interview afterwards Capt. Morgan said that ​“Irene was a learning experience. We had to set up shelters we didn’t have before and decide where they were going to go. We lost communication at every level. People came to the police department to charge wheel chairs and cell phones. We had not been set up for that. Now we are. We transformed our communications operation. This is a far faster restoration than in Irene. I have to commend CL & P. They are here.”

He was referring to David Ferrante, the CL& P official assigned to the town. He was tabulating numbers and talking to officials in the field as he sat in the emergency center, near a huge screen on which were listed the places of all downed trees and electric wires.

Asked how he was faring, he said: ​“I’m doing great. Better than the last time,” he said recalling Irene.

Then DaRos went to speak to him about a matter that had just come up.

DaRos also said scores of houses across the town had been damaged and the assessor’s office will have a final count after it inspects the damage. This means the town’s reval list will once again be changed because of a super storm. 
 
CL& P’s results were visible. Hurricane Sandy rolled into Branford and other shoreline communities in full force Sunday midnight at high tide. Throughout Monday the winds increased and the sea surged. At about 5 p.m. a huge wind gust left the town without power. ​“Within minutes, the police department received over 120 calls concerning downed trees and or wires or both. A huge portion came after 5 p.m.,” Capt. Morgan said. 

By Wednesday morning 75 percent of all CL& P’s customers in Branford were still without power. But by 8 p.m, 12 hours later, CL& P had reduced that percentage to 40 percent of its customers still without power. Stony Creek is one of the villages still dark. 

The nearby towns of Guilford and Madison were not doing as well. By Thursday night at 8 p.m., 80 percent of all CL& P customers in Madison and 70 percent of all CL& P customers in Guilford were still without power. These numbers continued to fluctuate Thursday morning. 

“Power restoration is moving along rather rapidly now,” First Selectman Unk DaRos told residents in his evening B‑informed call to all homes on this list. He was referring to getting roads open and power restored. One major intersection in Indian Neck had been deeply flooded. (See photo above.)

In an interview DaRos said the town took other steps that kept Branford ahead of the curve.

“About a week ahead of time we brought in a massive emergency generator to back up our own generator at its primary sewage treatment plant located on Block Island Rd. ​“So we had a redundancy of auxiliary power but I felt it was important to have that,” he said. Other town officials told him they wish they had taken similar steps, he said. 

The sewage treatment plant and the town’s major electric sub-stations were top priorities he said. Late today the substation located on Meadow Road which had sustained flooding was up and running and power was restored to sections of Short Beach.

Meanwhile, Main Street and Route 1, the business areas, were slowly showing signs of life. Power was restored to large sections of this major road, which has interchangeable names. Slowly traffic signals were blinking again. Tree cutting trucks were all over town. 

A major concern for town officials was the weather. It is getting colder and families were telling town officials they needed to put their heat on.  But no electricity, no heat. With Irene, a late August, 2011 storm, getting the furnace going was not an issue. CL&P is not unaware that November is upon us.

Unlike Irene virtually all the roads that sustained extreme tree damage have been cleared within 48 hours.  “Town crews and power crews have been working round-the-clock since Sunday,” DaRos said.  One of the hardest hit was at Rosenthal Gardens where a huge tree fell on a section of the building. Residents were evacuated.

He said the street that sustained the worst damage in this storm was Beckett Avenue, which lies adjacent to the Sound in Short Beach.  It was also deep underwater during Storm Irene. 

COMMUNICATION

As residents learned last year during Irene, bundling all communication services with one provider can be problematic when the power goes out. Comcast customers who bundled television, internet and phones lost all services during Irene. Click here to read that story . It happened again this year when Sandy knocked out electricity.

Laura Brubaker Crisco, public relations director for Comcast’s Western New England region, told the Eagle Wednesday that most of the issues with Comcast are directly related to the electrical outages triggered by Sandy. She said Comcast service will be functional for most customers as soon as electricity is restored to their homes.

“We are working in tandem with local emergency personnel and the power companies to assess damage and restore service as quickly and safely as possible,” Crisco said in a prepared statement. “If a customer still does not have service after power has been restored in their area, they can call us at 1-800-COMCAST.  We know our services are important to our customers, and appreciate their patience and understanding as we continue working to ensure service is safely restored for all.” 

In most cases, residents who have home phones with a carrier like AT&T are able to use their land lines during a power failure if they have a corded phone. Smart phones and cell phones powered by providers like AT&T or Verizon will work as long as cell towers are operational. During Irene, there were numerous cellular outages because towers had insufficient back up generation when electricity failed.

Linda Roberts, executive director of the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC), said Wednesday there were no early estimates of the how many cell towers were affected by Sandy. Click here to read a story about the problems the CSC encountered last year trying to get data from the cell companies.  The companies eventually provided some information.

There are currently no federal, state or CSC requirements for backup power at cell towers, and each company develops its own standards. The state and the CSC are currently working to remedy that situation.

Branford’s Town Hall technology fared much better this year than during Irene. The town’s offical Web site has been functioning, unlike last year when it could not be accessed for about a week after Irene hit. Internet service was available to town employees from the outset. The town returned to running on its own power Wednesday, DaRos said.

Peter Hugret, the director of Information Technology (IT) who recently retired, previously told the Eagle that problems last year occurred because Town Hall bundled all its communication services with one provider, Comcast. He said there are now multiple sources to power the Web site. Check the website for information on storm issues. Curbside garbage service resumes Monday, for example.

Hugret said the new fiber optic system, which was completed in recent months, links Town Hall with the police station, fire headquarters, the schools and other departments. He said the fiber optic system, which is owned and operated by the town, provides a fast and reliable communications network.

Also last summer, the IT department closed the data center at Town Hall and centralized all operations at the police station and the high school where permanent generators are in place. That move had been in the works for a few years.

Debra Caron, who just began her duties Monday as the new IT director, said the systems have been operating well.

So has the internet service at the Blackstone Memorial Library, once it resumed service late Tuesday. The parking lot was jammed and the library was packed with people, all seeking internet access,  especially Face Book updates. 

PETS SPEND THE NIGHT AT A SHELTER

About 40 people hunkered down in a Mary T. Murphy School Monday night along with seven dogs and four cats. Not all towns accept people and their pets. But Branford does.

It started with Irene.  Laura Burban, director of the Cosgrove Animal Shelter, said it was essential that families with pets have a place to go. During the Katrina storm in New Orleans animals were abandoned, left to fend for themselves.  Families were ordered not to take their pets with them to shelters. Those decisions led to a different way of thinking.

People started coming into the Murphy shelter once they lost power, including a number of people from Blackstone Acres – an area not especially prone to flooding.

Murphy is the designated shelter in Branford for people with pets – neither North Branford nor Guilford have pet-friendly shelters, so Murphy accommodated one resident each from those towns.

Burban, who returned early from a conference, spent the night at the Cosgrove Animal Shelter. “I could feel the solar panel room swaying,” she said. The shelter is running on a generator.

She was isolated for a time due to the failure of AT&T cell service and police and fire radios.

Burban was “recharging her batteries” in a matter of speaking at Murphy with Animal Control Officer Pam Medlyn, Volunteer Coordinator Jodi McGovern, and volunteers Andrea Kenney and Rick White.

A few people remained Tuesday afternoon and Burban said she expected some people to return Tuesday night at high tide.  But the numbers went down as the storm subsided. 

As of Wednesday afternoon the temporary shelter was locked and empty. And that was probably a good thing. The shelter was moved to the Community House on Church St., home of the town’s recreation department. This frees the two schools that were used as shelters to re-open.

Schools will be closed Thursday. So far no report on whether classes will resume Friday. But virtually all roads are passable now.

As for Halloween, DaRos said many residents called Town Hall to find out the status of this important day.  They learned it was postponed for a week to Nov.7, the day after Election Day.

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