PROVIDENCE – Tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders remained without power on Monday morning after tropical storm Henri made landfall Sunday.
Much of the outages remaining in the state were in Washington County, where 37,346 customers remained without power as of 8:15 a.m., according to National Grid Rhode Island.
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The storm, which made landfall as a tropical storm, buffeted the state with wind gusts as high as 70 mph, a storm surge and a deluge of rain, creating conditions for downed and uprooted trees, cutting power to thousands due to damaged power lines.
In Newport County, more than National Grid 1,000 customers were still without power Monday morning, while Kent County had more than 5,000 customers without power, according to the utility company. Providence County had just over 500 outages and Bristol County had only two customers without power as of Monday morning, National Grid said.
By 2 p.m. Monday, over 32,000 customers remained without power in the state, including over 27,500 customers in Washington County.
The utility company is projecting that some Rhode Island customers could remain without power until Aug. 25, though Terry Sobelowski, interim president for National Grid New England, said most power outages in the state will be resolved before the end of the day on Tuesday.
Gov. Daniel J. McKee on Monday said he was pleased with National Grid’s response to the storm, noting that Rhode Island was harder hit by outages than both Connecticut and Massachusetts. McKee said that the storm’s impact highlighted the need for future investment into the state’s power grid.
Rhode Island was reported to have roughly 80,000 customers without power at the height of the storm’s disruption.
The National Weather Service said that Rhode Island remains under a flood watch Monday, as Henri, now a tropical depression, has the chance to turn back east to Rhode Island as it rolls out to sea.
National Grid said on Sunday that it had over 4,000 field personnel working in New England, including roughly 1,000 in Rhode Island.
As of Monday morning, Rhode Island remained more heavily affected by outages than either Connecticut and Massachusetts, with roughly 8,000 customers impacted in the entire state of Connecticut as of 8:45 a.m. and less than 1,000 in Massachusetts, according to National Grid and Eversource Energy.
(SUBS paragraphs 5-7 with update on response and comment from McKee and updates on outage figures in the state.)
