Connecticut Light & Power said it couldn’t yet give an estimate of when power will be restored for customers who lost it during Hurricane Sandy, but that thousands of people have already had power restored since Monday night.
William Quinlan, a senior vice president for CL&P, said more than 600,000 customers were without power at the height of the storm last night, but the utility company was able to restore electricity to 135,000 of them by this morning.
During a press conference Tuesday morning, when asked by a reporter about restoration estimates, Quinlan said there wouldn’t be any right now but that there could be some later tonight.
With the worst of the storm now over, the utility company now has hundreds of workers out on the road with the objective of getting customers’ lights back on. The utility company’s senior leadership, as well as Gov. Dannel Malloy, is expected to tour the areas hardest hit by the storm, notable the southeastern and southwestern parts of the state.
The company’s focus is now on helping municipalities get roads open and establishing staging areas for the ongoing restoration effort.
Quinlan said CL&P never had to take offline two coastal substations, one in Branford and another in Stamford, because of effort by the company’s staff — using sand bags and concrete walls — to shore them up from potential flooding from the storm surge.
“In general we are impacted heavily by trees, which is generally in the case of high wind like this,” Quinlan told the media.
