Sam Gurwitt Photo
Bobby Sullivan at work on Putnam Avenue.
At 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, a branch was still completely blocking the westbound lane of Putnam Avenue.
A large oak on the side of the road, just to the east of the Farmington Canal Trail, had snapped in the high winds of Tropical Storm Isaias. The storm barreled down on Connecticut the day before, leaving a third of the town without power and streets all over town littered with branches.
Three large Hamden Public Works dumpster trucks showed up first, and then a backhoe. As cars rolled past in the other lane, Bobby Sullivan pulled out a chainsaw and started to lob off the branches, one at a time, from the limb. John Cesare, Nick Ferraro, and Louis Pascale picked up the branches that fell onto the asphalt and threw them into a pile.
John Joslyn sat in the backhoe. Once the others had assembled a large-enough pile of branches, the wide shovel on the front of his machine opened into a claw, which he used to scoop up the debris. Wood snapped as the metal jaw closed around the branches.
One of the other workers took another chainsaw and trimmed off the ends of the branches poking out of either side of the shovel so the branches would fit in the dumpster truck. Another stopped traffic coming from Dixwell Avenue so that Joslyn could drive to where the trucks were parked on the opposite sidewalk and dump the branches in. They would later be hauled to the transfer station or to the public works yard to be processed.
Sullivan and his crew only got so far, though. They could not reach the upper branches, so once they had done what they could, they waited for help.
After a few minutes, another crew arrived with a bucket truck. They stopped and talked, and then the first crew drove off. The new group lowered the braces on the sides of the bucket truck, and Mark Richo slid into a harness.
Richo plugged a chainsaw on a pole into two thick orange cords that protruded from the arm of the bucket, and then climbed in. He raised himself up, and then away from the truck, and stopped when he was level with the upper branches of the downed tree.
Cars continued to roll by him as he reached his chainsaw toward the branches and lobbed off first the small ones until the larger limbs were exposed. He cut those into smaller lengths, each one falling to the ground with a dull thud.
Slowly, the limb receded until little was left protruding past the fence on the edge of the sidewalk. Sawdust, leaves, and acorns littered the road.
Streets Clear, Power Restored
On Wednesday, trees lay partially blocking streets, or uprooted in lawns all over Hamden.
Hamden is no stranger to severe wind events. Two years ago, a tornado destroyed large swaths of tree canopy in the northern end of town. In 1989, a tornado touched down in the southern part of town, destroying buildings in the Highwood neighborhood.
This time Hamden was not spared. But no tornados descended from the sky to wreak havoc on just the land of Sleeping Giant, leaving other towns in the area unscathed. This time, Hamden fared no worse than many of its neighbors.
By about 6 p.m. Tuesday, close to 10,000 customers — about 36 percent of the town — were without power, according to United Illuminating (UI). Outages were not concentrated in just one area. Trees were down across wires all over town.
By 5 p.m. Wednesday, UI was reporting that about 4,400 customers — about 16 percent of the town — were still without power.
Public Works Director Craig Cesare said the town had “well over 150 locations” that needed clearing. In many cases, UI had to clear first, because trees had fallen across electrical wires. Cesare said the town is still working, and is still assessing how much more needs to be done.
Public works crews have been out since the storm hit on Tuesday. Some worked overnight. Others, like Sullivan and the rest of his crew, came to work at 7 a.m., and will continue working through the afternoon. Sullivan and other members of his crew said they didn’t know what time they would stop.
“Seven, eight, nine, we haven’t been told yet,” said Louis Pascale when asked when his day would end.
Pascale and the four other men in his crew were taking sips of water and awaiting their next assignment on Breezy Court in the northern end of town. “Livin’ On A Prayer “was blasting out the open door of one of the trucks.
They had just driven up Shepard Avenue, stopping periodically as they went to clear branches from the side of the busy road as cars veered around them.
At Breezy Court, a cluster of branches from a maple tree had fallen across the quiet residential street. The crew made quick work of them.
As he would do later on Putnam Ave, Sullivan sawed while his colleagues hauled branches into a pile. Joslyn drove the backhoe, picking up the pile and dumping it into one of the dumpster trucks.
It took only about 20 minutes to clear the street. All that was left of the downed branches was a mess of sawdust blanketing the road.
They hopped back in their trucks and drove down Whitney Avenue to Evergreen Avenue, and then pulled off onto Tanglewood Drive.
They had been given a list of places that needed clearing, but some had already been cleared. That seemed to be the case on Tanglewood, so they sat for a few minutes to await instructions.
When asked how he keeps his energy up on a long, intense day like Wednesday, Pascale shrugged. “Drink a lot of water,” he said.
Joslyn nodded in assent. He said he tries to pack whatever he can to get through the day. “Granola bars, food, just to keep you going.”
After a few minutes, the crew pulled back onto Evergreen Avenue and headed South. They stopped at one spot to clear debris, and then continued South to Dixwell, where they drove past the plaza and the mart where traffic lights were out. They continued south until Putnam, where the large oak was blocking the westbound lane.
An hour or so, and a lot of drops of sweat later, Putnam, like Breezy Court, was open, and crews were on to the next mess of broken branches.
Once the recovery effort is done, is there any way to ascertain how much the cleanup in total cost? Or similarly if we were looking at previous weather events like the tornado and other tropical storms/hurricanes that made landfall?