Granny Snatching: How CL&P Fails The Elderly In Eastern Connecticut

It was only last month that my 94-year-old mother’s doctor recommended that we buy her an electrically controlled hospital bed. She has been living with us for three years and it was a great idea. It made bed time much easier for everyone as it can raised or lowered electrically as needed.

I also decided to buy an electrical generator for our home just in case we have a bad winter. I put it on the budget for late October or early November. Unfortunatley I forgot about tropital storms and hurricanes. The last one that caused us any real trouble was Gloria in 1985.

But just after 8:30 a.m. Sunday, a tree went down across a power line a short distance from our house, the lights went out and are still out. Phone and cable followed soon after.

I heard on the Jim Vicevich radio show Monday that 800 power and tree crews were working to bring back the juice in Connecticut. So where are they?

We have eight trees down in our yard, one limb is across our storage shed, most of the food in my freezer has thawed and there is no way to operate my mother’s medical equipment.

I got the number for CL&P’s call center off the television just before losing power. They said to call even if you think that a neighbor has already so they can pinpoint the outage. Fat lot of good that did.

I called the first time late Sunday, got a recording and responded to the cues for information. They are aware of the outage and the situation is being assessed, the recording assured us.

“Oh good,” I thought. “One tree. One line. It won’t be long now.” But nothing happened.

I heard people from across the state saying on the radio that they lost power at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, as did most of the rest of my town. But many people also are saying they haven’t seen CL&P crews either.

I called CL&P twice more Monday with the intent of informing someone, anyone, that we have a 94-year-old resident in our home with medical issues. Twice more a recording told me to stay on the line, which I did until both of my cell phones powered down and I was disconnected.

I wasn’t trying to create a false sense of urgency. But I did want to alert someone that a person with special needs lives here. It turned out to be an impossible task.

My wife went to my mom’s house in Manchester to recharge our cell phones. When she returned I reached out to several friends, who generally know what is going on in our community. I discovered that CL&P workers of our acquaintance are saying that small East of the River towns could be without power for another week.

The rumors abounded that the bulk of the crews are assigned to taking care of west-of-the-river communities first.

So I called State Senator Edith Prague (D-Columbia) who has befriended and helped my mother over the years. Senator Prague said there was a tree over a power line not far from her home on Rt. 87, but she couldn’t reach anyone at CL&P either.

Nonetheless she said she would try to find us an emergency generator, which sounded good to me. A half an hour later she called back and said she could not reach anyone – not fire officials, not emergency management personnel, not even the resident state police trooper in my town.

She offered to call the Troop K state police barracks in Colchester on our behalf, but I declined as my mother is not yet facing an emergency situation.

Tuesday I had an appointment in Norwich and drove there with my friend Duke. The office we were going to was closed because they also had now power. Traffic signals throughout the area were of course not working either so we decided to return to Hebron via Rt. 32 and Rt. 87.

Although they are country roads without traffic signals, we soon found many trees across many power lines and ended up detouring onto Rt. 286 and Rt. 66. We drove through at least 7 towns and saw a handful of tree cutting crews gassing up at a local station after taking a huge tree off the wires at the intersections of Rts. 87 and 32 on the Franklin Norwich line. Then…nothing.

In what turned out to be a roughly 70 mile trip, through seven towns, all on state roads, we did not see a single power crew.

CL&P says it was 800 crews in the towns it serves, working to restore power. If that is true they could assign at least five crews to every town at the same time and still have a quick response force of about 50 additional crews to serve the hardest hit areas.

As the towns with the least damage come back on line more crews would be available to help with those with extensive outages.

Hebron’s power outage was at or near 100 percent until Tuesday when both of our two traffic signals were brought back on line. With that our small business community on Rts. 66 and 85 also saw their power returned but that still left three quarters of our community in the dark.

Many of my friends believe that the governor and CL&P are prioritizing restoration efforts based on community wealth and political considerations rather than a common need. Several have noted that the 2nd Congressional District in eastern Connecticut, which voted primarily for Gov. Dannel Malloy’s competitor last year, have the most power outages and the least response.

They are not shy in pointing out that we all pay the same electric rates no matter where we live. More than a few have said in the last day or two that if towns like Hebron are going to be last on the list than our power rates should also be adjusted downward.

Personally I like that idea, especially when despite numerous attempts I can’t even speak to a human being to give them the status of my home’s occupants. Frankly from what I have seen in the last three days I think CL&P should adjust the rates to pay us to be their customers instead of vice verse.

My mother has talked about the hurricanes she has survived over the years and one thing that stands out in all of her tales is that Americans were far more self sufficient in her youth than they are today. No electricity, no phone, and no cable equal no communication and no basic necessities today.

We are relatively self sufficient in my home, but there will be a 10 kw generator here ASAP. I also will be exploring some solar and wind options.

CL&P should have a designated line available so they can alerted to special situations such as homes inhabited by home-bound elderly. They didn’t and that is unacceptable.

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