WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Winter Storm Brings Power Outages

Winter Storm Brings Power Outages

Franklin, Vermont - November 28, 2009

A wet snowfall of up to a foot hammered Vermont's northeast kingdom and several other areas overnight, causing widespread power failures. Line crews have been on the job ever since,  although it appears that most of the problems have been fixed.

Line crews from the Vermont Electric Cooperative had already been on the road for hours Saturday morning and were gradually putting customers back on line after high winds and wet snow put close to 10,000 Vermont customers out of power.

When big outages happen, the line crews cover for each other. Shawn Juaire, a lineman for the Coop, said, "We're actually out of the Islands. We got a group of four of us that got together. We came in from the Island district to help cover the Richford area. They were already out on another call over east of here."

The owner at Dick Wright Ford in Franklin says he lost business as a result. Mark Vaillancourt told Channel 3, "We finally got the generator going which don't run the lights on air compressors, but we turned down quite a lot of work, because we couldn't do the work."

The line crews found that the heavy snow caused a lot of the problems. Donald Gates, another lineman, said "It was loading up the wires, you know, probably two-to-three inches in diameter snow on 'em, so it was sagging the hot wire into the neutral."

Whenever a storm hits, utilities worry about accidental electrocutions which can avoided by using extra care. VEC spokeswoman Kathryn Kantorski said, "I guess that I would just encourage members or the general public, if they come across any downed power lines, to call the utility. Don't try to remove any trees from power lines. Leave that up to the experts."

Overall, the line crews fixed most of the outages, but some electric customers in southern Vermont would have to wait until late Saturday night before they might see the power back on.

CVPS says Orange and Windsor counties were hardest hit by the storm. A couple hundred customers there may have to wait until Sunday morning for the lights to come back on.

And The Vermont Electric Cooperative is also reporting about 900 homes still without power in the Northeast Kingdom.

In New Hampshire, more than 40,000 thousand homes there were without power. The Public Service Company of New Hampshire say the western part of the state was the hardest hit.

The wet snowfall also wreaked havoc on Vermont roads. Several drivers in Buels Gore near the Appalachian Gap were stranded by the storm. And several cars also skidded off nearby Route 17. Police say many drivers were unprepared for the icy roads and didn't have snow tires.

Andy Potter -- WCAX News