Many residents and officials of the Town of New Canaan observed, and there were additional reports published in the press of, Eversource crews parked in public parking lots and the parking areas of take-out establishments doing nothing while municipal highway crews were awaiting their arrival to make-safe downed wires so that roads could be cleared to allow passage of ambulances, fire engines, and police cars.
This delay in restoration was obviously the result of a management failure by Eversource to coordinate with Town officials. Town officials knew where public roads were obstructed by Eversource’s wires and what the appropriate community priorities for restoration were. By failing to take advantage of public resources, Eversource wasted rate-payers’ money, duplicating such information-gathering in a less prompt and obviously much less efficient manner. In addition Eversource’s mismanagement in this respect materially delayed clearance of public roads and prompt restoration of electric service.
Moreover, the unnecessary delay endangered the safety of rate-payers and their properties.
Accordingly, the [Public Utilities Regulatory Authority] commission should disallow the money wasted by crews sitting idle while the Company performed inefficient and duplicative “surveying” of the damage because of its management’s failure to take advantage of local sources of information. In addition, the Company should be required to reimburse the Towns for the unnecessary expense of their idled crews resulting from the Company’s unnecessary delays in dispatching make-safe crews.
Respectfully submitted,
William Malone
We had tree crews from North Carolina arrive four different times in one 24 hour period, but they could not do anything until the wires were grounded by Eversource. After a week, Eversource grounded the wires and a crew was able to clear the fallen trees in less than an hour. 24 hours later, Eversource arrived to restring the electric wires. After 3-1/2 weeks, we are still waiting for Optimum and Frontier to restring their wires.