Power crews work overnight to restore thousands of outages

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Crews with green mountain power have been working throughout the night-- trying to restore outages throughout the state.

Following Friday’s storm, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire saw thousands of outages.

Kristin Kelly with Green Mountain Power says as of 7:30 a.m. more than 74,000 customers had their power restored, but crews are still hard at work to get the rest back on.

“There were some really tough conditions overnight. We did take some new outages last night however crews have really been working to get the customers back on,” Kelly said. “So far we’ve restored power to more than 74,000 customers. We have about 20,000 customers out and crews won’t stop until everybody is back on they do expect to make a lot of progress today.”

She says crews have been faced with tough conditions throughout the overnight including widespread damage from strong winds.

“Uprooted trees, we are seeing a lot of broken poles across the state. A lot of wind force in order to cause that to happen in the first place and then it is very time consuming labor intensive work to replace a pole,” Kelly said. “That is time consuming and just the basic building block is getting that power back on for everybody.

Kelly said it’s important to remember safety tips if you come across a downed wire.

“We’ve got tons of people out there a field force of hundreds out there restoring power and they really do expect to make a lot of progress today. This is going to be a multi-day event. We’re in day two now. And so we really want people to be aware of safety stay away from any downlines or trees and also give crews room to work.”

Copyright 2022 WCAX. All rights reserved.