Outage Rate Drops Dramatically in Brookfield Friday

Power is slowly returning to Brookfielders who have been without electricity since , with reports of the lights coming back on on Obtuse Road South and many of its side roads early Friday morning. As of 12 p.m. Friday, Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) is reporting only 9 percent of the town without power, down from .

“We expect to have 99 percent of the state back up before Wednesday [September 7],” Brookfield’s CL&P representative Bob Bobarsky said Friday, stating that many would see their power restored well before that.

Lake George Road resident David Propper, , told Patch his power was restored Friday, a week ahead of the projected schedule.

Meanwhile, more than 770 resident are still in the dark.

During a 10 a.m. meeting with Bobarsky and town officials, First Selectman Bill Davidson stated that the focus going into the weekend would be on the Deer Run Road and Flax Hill Road areas, as well as clearing trees on Arrowhead Point and in Candlewood Shores.

“We know what we’ve got to get done,” Davidson said, noting the marked progress since the stagnation earlier in the week.

As of 8 a.m., the number of statewide outages was at 148,000 CL&P customers, a fraction of the peak 672,000 customers who were without power earlier this week.

With nearly 1,600 crews expected to be working Friday — nearly double the number of personnel on the ground Tuesday — the company is on track to meet its initial goal, which was to have fewer than 100,000 statewide outages by Saturday.

“We will continue a 24-hour-a-day restoration as we move forward with this three-day weekend,” CL&P Chief Operating Officer Jeff Butler said during a telephone conference with reporters Friday morning. “We are maintaining a workforce that we have this weekend.”

The damage to the state was extensive with 10,000 “trouble spots” identified (see below) and more than 2,000 roads closed immediately following the aftermath of Irene, Butler said.

The devastation was more severe in the eastern and southwest corners of the state with these areas expected to take the longest to get back online, Butler said.

Butler said the company would consider ways to prevent such a large-scale outage in the future but it would require the agreement of local officials and residents.

“It would [require] extensive tree trimming and tree removal and whatever we do has to be acceptable to the public as well,” he said.

Burying the lines underground would likely prove cost-prohibitive to the company and municipalities, Butler said.

Across the state, CL&P reported 943 broken poles, 508 damaged transformers, 3,433 sections of downed wires and 2,119 road closings at the start of restoration efforts. As of Friday morning, the utility said it has repaired 458 broken poles, 176 transformers, re-wired 1,389 sections of line and opened 1,480 roads.

CL&P provided this breakdown of damage by sections of the state it serves:

Southern district, including Brookfield, Newtown, Norwalk, Stamford, Greenwich, New Canaan, Westport, Ridgefield, Redding, Weston, Easton, Fairfield, Bethel, Danbury, Darien and Monroe:

•  Broken poles: 336, repaired 237
•  Damaged transformers: 193, repaired 73
•  Sections of downed wires: more than 1,000, repaired 624
•  Road closures: 498, opened 440

Eastern district, including Branford, Guilford, Madison, Clinton, Westbrook, Old Saybrook, the Lymes, Waterford, Stoningotn, Ledyard, Haddam, Durham, Middletown, Colchester, Glastonbury, Mansfield, Williamantic and Killingly:

•  Broken poles: 384, repaired 126
•  Damaged transformers: 174, repaired 30
•  Sections of downed wires: 1,198, repaired 183
•  Road closures: 649, re-opened 448

Central division, including Farmington, Avon, West Hartford, Manchester, Vernon, Tolland, Willington, South Windsor, Ellington, Stafford, Granby and Simsbury:

•  Broken poles: 56, repaired 51
•  Damaged transformers: 50, repaired 43
•  Sections of downed wires: 417, repaired 328
•  Road closures: 242, re-opened 214

Eastern division, including Oxford, Southbury, Woodbury, Middlebury, Waterbury, Southington, New Britain, Berlin, Meriden, Litfield, Torrington, Canaan, Cheshire, Bethany, Seymour and Beacon Falls:

• Broken poles: 165, repaired 71
• Damaged transformers: 91, repaired 30
• Sections of downed wire: 616, repaired 254
• Road closures: 702, re-opened 350