The governor has requested a presidential major disaster declaration regarding the damage from Tropical Storm Isaias in August.
The request includes all eight counties. If approved, it would make the state, every municipality, and the two tribal nations, eligible for federal reimbursement of up to 75% of the cost of damage to infrastructure.
Tropical Storm Isaias left more than 750,000 Connecticut customers without power, some lasting a full week. There were hundreds of blocked roads, broken utility polls, and damaged transformers and wires. At least two deaths and five serious injures were blamed on the storm.
Eversource and United Illuminating, two of the state's largest utilities, faced heavy criticism of their responses to the storm that prompted lawmakers to look at changing the standards for storm response and compensation for ratepayers during long-term outages.
After a detailed assessment as required by FEMA, the state determined that there were around $21 million in damages to public infrastructure with the storm.
