Utility crews work to fix thousands of outages across region

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - As of Friday afternoon, tens of thousands of people were without power across Vermont thanks to the storm.

Green Mountain Power’s Kristin Kelly said they had been anticipating widespread outages because of the high winds. Overnight, crews restored power to thousands, but more went out because of the aggressive wind. That’s making things harder for power crews.

“In some locations, because of the severe wind, they’ve had to stop work temporarily and then they get back at it,” Kelly said. “But we expect that kind of conditions to be happening throughout the day as the wind continues throughout the state.”

She said out-of-state crews from Maine, Canada and Massachusetts that helped during the last storm were asked to stay and help with this one.

“We have tripled our field force in advance of the storm,” said Kelly.

Kelly says to stay away from downed trees and lines and call GMP to report issues.

Some outages may take time to repair because the reported damage is severe.

In New Hampshire, about 52,000 customers were without power at noontime as the strong winds topped trees and took down wires. That’s a little over 9% of the state without power.

In New York’s North Country, there were no outages reported at noontime.

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