Connecticut's two major power companies said they have crews working around the clock to restore power to the thousands still in the dark after Irene and hope to fully restore power as of Wednesday of next week. Jeff Butler, of CL&P said on Tuesday night.
About 350,000 customers are still without power on Wednesday morning, down from a high of 830,000 during the height of the storm. Of those. 289,896 are CL&P customers.
The damage in the eastern part of the state is more severe than in the west and some towns still have no power three days after the storm, Connecticut Light & Power officials said. The company is focusing first on getting power back to town centers by the end of the day on Thursday so that key services, such as supermarkets and gas stations, can operate.
When the power will be back on is not clear. CL&P officials said they hope that by Saturday, fewer than 100,000 customers will be out of power.
CL&P officials said they hope to restore 99 percent of power to the 26 communities served by Torrington and Cheshire workstations by midnight on Thursday.
"We understand the frustration and the pain," a spokesperson for United Illuminating said.
Defending his company against complaints of a slow response to the outages, Jeff Butler, president of CL&P, said crews are working 16-hour shifts and the company has 24-hour coverage to restore power.
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"We will focus on the areas where we can restore power to the most people first," Butler said.
CL&P has 942 two-person crews out working on trees and lines on Wednesday, up from 854 on Tuesday. Crews have traveled in from other states and the company's goal is to have 1,200 crews out by Friday.
Those crews are distributed across the state, CL&P officials said.
The biggest issue impacting the power system is trees, officials said.
"Power is our main priority," Gov. Dannel Malloy said Monday evening.
The financial cost to restore the system is estimated at $75 million.
CL&P was asked about the possibility of replacing the network of overhead wires. but said the cost is extraordinary and cost-prohibitive.
Nine-hundred-and-twelve streets within the CL&P coverage area were blocked because of storm damage and 320 have been cleared, according to CL&P officials, who attributes 95 percent of the outages to trees.
United Illuminating reduced the number of customers without power to 60,772 as of 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, down from a high of 158,000 during the storm. The company said they hope to have the outage number down to 10,000 during the weekend.
