PROVIDENCE – Midday Wednesday, National Grid Rhode Island reported that more than 34,000 Rhode Island customers were still affected by outages caused by Sunday night’s storm.
It was estimated that 11,310 were affected in Washington County, 11,337 in Providence County, 10,467 were still affected in Kent County, 1,311 were still affected in Bristol County and 194 in Newport County. About 631 customers were estimated to be still affected in Bristol County, Mass.
Warwick remained the hardest hit town in Rhode Island, with over 5,000 customers affected by outages still.
The estimated restoration time for every county in Rhode Island was updated to 11:45 p.m. Thursday. Estimated restoration times reflect National Grid’s approximation for when the last customer in a town or county will have power restored.
National Grid said it has mutual assistance crews from around the country working on restoring power in Rhode Island.
In an update on National Grid’s website, the company said it expects to make “significant restoration progress” Wednesday, returning power to a majority of its customers.
Lt. Gov. Dan Mckee, chair of the Emergency Management Advisory Council and chair of the Small Business Advocacy Council addressed the storm and its aftermath in a statement Wednesday.
“Our local economy has been devastated by the aftermath of this storm. Municipalities are facing increases in costs for public safety overtime and the extension of the school year,” he said. “Small businesses have lost thousands of dollars and Rhode Island families are still dealing with significant hardships.”
Mckee also had scolding words for National Grid.
“The message I’ve received from municipal leaders and small business owners is loud and clear—the communication between National Grid and ratepayers was insufficient and inconsistent,” said Mckee. “I know from experience that unreliable information on power restoration makes it difficult to run a municipality and impossible to operate a business.”
He also compared the emergency power outage response in Massachusetts to the response in Rhode Island.
“I am very concerned that Massachusetts was able to resolve their 282,000 total outages down to 34,000 while in Rhode Island, our 154,000 total outages have only been reduced to 38,000. That ratio doesn’t work for Rhode Islanders.”
More information can be found at National Grid Rhode Island’s outage central. National Grid updates its outage information every 15 minutes.
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
