National Grid’s line, tree, and public safety specialists continue to face challenging weather and road conditions as they assess damage, clean up debris and restore power to customers impacted by another round of high winds and heavy, wet snow in Eastern New York. Company crews from across the state were pre-positioned ahead of the storm and have been supplemented with outside resources from Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Canada.
As of 7:30 p.m., April 4, the field force of nearly 1,000 employees has restored service to nearly 61,000 of the more than 72,000 impacted Eastern New York customers. Some areas have seen more than a foot and damaging wind gusts which resulted in uprooted trees, snapped tree limbs, broken poles and downed power lines. Tree damage in some locations has made roads impassable and created equipment access issues for company crews. Regions hardest hit by the storm’s extensive damage include Essex, Fulton, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Warren counties.
“Public safety is our top priority as our crews are in the field removing debris, repairing widespread damage and restoring service across the region,” said Kyle Bentley, lead director of New York Electric Operations. “We will continue to work as quickly and as safely as possible in the face of difficult conditions.”
National Grid is working closely with local officials to coordinate restoration effort.
In the early stages of a storm, the restoration times on National Grid’s Outage Central site may be listed as “assessing conditions.” This is because debris such as trees, tree limbs, and downed wires must be cleared away so that damage to our equipment can be assessed and restoration plans can be executed.
It's normal for outage numbers and estimated restoration times to fluctuate as we de-energize lines to make conditions safe for repairs. Additionally, there could be new outages that occur if strong, damaging winds and heavy snowfall continues.
The company’s first priority is to ensure the safety of customers and crews by clearing away dangers such as live, downed power lines. Next comes repairs to main transmission facilities, including towers, poles and high-tension wires that deliver power to thousands of customers. Recovery work at local substations also is a high priority, followed by repairs to neighborhood circuits, transformers and service wires.
