Gov. Lamont orders investigation into Storm Isaias

8202031075387 Anthony Zepperi News 0

By: Antho­ny Zepperi 
August 11, 2020
The Hart­ford Guardian 

HARTFORD – Gov. Ned Lam­ont has request­ed that the Con­necti­cut Pub­lic Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­to­ry Author­i­ty con­duct a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion of the state’s pub­lic util­i­ty com­pa­nies, includ­ing Ever­source and Unit­ed Illu­mi­nat­ing, amid wide­spread out­ages caused by Trop­i­cal Storm Isa­ias that have left hun­dreds of thou­sands of cus­tomers with­out power.

Ever­source has received back­lash for its long response time for han­dling pow­er out­ages after Isa­ias. (Pho­to by Antho­ny Zepperi)

The storm, which ripped through many parts of Con­necti­cut Tues­day, some hit hard­er than oth­ers, have kept peo­ple with­out pow­er for days now, call­ing into ques­tion the response by var­i­ous light and pow­er com­pa­nies, includ­ing Eversource.

Lam­ont said that the com­pa­nies’ response to the storm was inad­e­quate and wants to know why there has been a slow response. As of Thurs­day, there are more than 450,000 Con­necti­cut cus­tomers with­out power. 

“Sev­er­al years ago, Con­necti­cut expe­ri­enced large scale out­ages that took days to recov­er from, and we were told that the util­i­ties were improv­ing their resources so that they can be pre­pared for the next time Moth­er Nature inevitably hits again,” Lam­ont said. “I don’t see much progress made for all the invest­ments we made in terms of hard­en­ing, strength­en­ing and mod­ern­iz­ing our grid.”

Accord­ing to Lam­ont, he wants to know what spe­cif­ic steps the com­pa­nies took in the lead up to Trop­i­cal Storm Isa­ias, which had been fore­cast­ed to impact Con­necti­cut sev­er­al days pri­or to mak­ing impact and remained on track as mete­o­rol­o­gists predicted.

PURA is the office respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing the rates and ser­vices of Connecticut’s elec­tric­i­ty, nat­ur­al gas, water and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies and is the fran­chis­ing author­i­ty for the state’s cable tele­vi­sion companies.

Ever­source Vice Pres­i­dent Elec­tric Oper­a­tions, Mike Hay­hurst, said that as peo­ple are stay­ing home dur­ing COVID-19, being with­out pow­er can be cumbersome. 

“We rec­og­nize how hard it is to be with­out elec­tric­i­ty, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when many peo­ple are work­ing remote­ly,” Hay­hurst said.

Ever­source esti­mates pow­er to be restored to most cus­tomers by late Tues­day night.