Name: Blocked roads, a police station without power and a lost dog: Four Danbury area towns take aim at Eversource’s storm response
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Blocked roads, a police station without power and a lost dog: Four Danbury area towns take aim at Eversource’s storm response

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John and Rebecca Fung headed to the basement of their Newtown home with their three children on the afternoon of Aug. 4. The hot, humid weather took a turn as Tropical Storm Isaias made its way through the area, knocking down trees and limbs, eventually cutting off electricity to hundreds of thousands of Eversource customers around the state.On their street, the storm brought down wires, causing two electrical fires.“You could smell the burning in the air,” John Fung said.Fire department crews put out the fires by smothering the flames and notifying Eversource, according to testimony filed by the town. But it wasn’t until Aug. 8 that the wires were deactivated and three days after that when power was finally restored to the neighborhood, the family said in an interview.This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIn the span of those days, not only did other electrical fires erupt, the family’s dog, Buddy, wandered toward the downed wires and died after being electrocuted. The Fung family, seeing the road had been cleared, said they thought the wires were no longer live.Eversource’s response to Tropical Storm Isaias has been called into question by public officials in all four of these communities over the course of 22 pages of testimony. The testimony is part of an investigation into Eversource by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, known as PURA. Complaints range from specific examples that claim communication breakdown, to a lack of empathy from the power company, to a need for more crews to have responded to the storm.“Besides the gross negligence we have witnessed, even more disturbing is how easily it could have been one of my three children,” Fung said in a letter to local and state representatives.“We were just some family in Sandy Hook whose dog died. We felt like no matter what we did or said, there wasn’t going to be any justice or accountability really, for Eversource, which was terrible,” he later told a News-Times reporter.A few towns over in Bethel, a police station went more than a week without electricity, only running on a generator. Ridgefield had emergency crews traveling by ATVs to bring supplies to those in need because they couldn’t drive past damage in many roads. In New Fairfield, a family’s daughter, who has cerebral palsy, struggled as they went more than a week without power.In banding together, the town officials hope PURA will impose the “strictest sanctions permitted by law” against Eversource. They, along with other town officials across the state, recommended PURA make several additions to the company’s storm response protocol including deploying Make-Safe crews and company representatives to towns ahead of a storm, as well as upgrading its communications platforms and mandating a direct line of communication between liaisons and senior management.Eversource has contended that the company was prepared for the storm and that it caused “unprecedented damage across the state” that resulted in “multi-day outages that were difficult for customers to bear under the circumstances,” company spokesman Mitch Gross said.INTERACTIVE“We mobilized a massive team of line and tree crews from across the country and Canada in the largest workforce we’ve ever assembled in Connecticut to make repairs and restore power for our customers. While we can’t prevent storms from happening, customers depend on us to restore power safely and quickly, and we take that responsibility seriously,” he added.These towns, part of a larger complaint against Eversource, expect a preliminary decision from PURA on March 19, followed by a final decision on April 28 regarding sanctions toward Eversource. The decision would include any findings and wrongdoing, if any, by Eversource throughout the storm, in addition to any recommendations or orders for moving forward.Bethel’s police station lost power during the Aug. 4 storm and ran on an auxiliary generator until Aug. 10, according to testimony from First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker. During that time, there was concern the town’s 911 system would fail.“Needless to say, it is untenable for the police station in our town to have been without power for six days, and Eversource’s neglect threatened the public safety and security of every resident in the Town of Bethel,” Knickerbocker said in testimony.Knickerbocker points to communication over Bethel’s police station as a key breakdown. The building is considered a “critical community support” facility for Eversource, meaning it comes second to “search and rescue and other lifesaving resources,” but should be a top priority for power restoration. Other prioritized facilities around the state would include fire stations, medical facilities, grocery stores, and pharmacies, among others.Gross, the Eversource spokesman, said the company received the “priority one” report for the police station and assigned the “closest resource,” a damage assessor, who deemed there was “no imminent, life-threatening situation at the location.“The Company does not prioritize critical facilities that are running on a generator over critical facilities that have no generator because running a generator is not a safety concern,” the company said in its testimony.“Had the outage been properly reported, the Company would have restored “street” power sooner to the Bethel Police Station,” the company added.Eversource also said it was “well aware” of the outage, but could not restore power to just the police station because it was connected to a substation that fuels multiple circuits in town. Bethel’s report was labeled as “misclassified” and the station continued without power until Aug. 10, according to Eversource’s testimony.The communication breakdown, however, was not solely tied to the police station. Knickerbocker and the other town officials filing joint testimony said Eversource should have made their “Make Safe” crews available to them at the onset of the storm.Make Safe crews clear blocked roads, especially for emergency vehicles, following a storm, according to the . The requirement for Eversource to provide a crew comes once a municipality has opened it’s emergency operations center, oftentimes in the event of a significant weather event.“The number one priority is to provide emergency vehicles access for search and rescue and other lifesaving actions,” the policy states. “Other priority considerations are public access to emergency shelters, hospitals and other medical facilities, and other critical community support facilities.”The towns filing joint testimony claim Eversource “failed to deploy Make Safe Crews in a timely fashion (and in some instances not at all), and power was not restored to critical facilities in an acceptable manner. Knickerbocker, who said he requested a crew be assigned to Bethel on the day of the storm, said he “received no response from Eversource.”“For days, Eversource failed to communicate with me and did not respond to the Town’s request,” he said, adding that a crew arrived Aug. 7 — three days after the storm hit.Eversource has countered in testimony that it is “not reasonable” for a Make Safe crew to be deployed ahead of a widespread event like this one.The local town leaders are now urging PURA to require Eversource to deploy the crews before a storm hits, in addition to dispatching at least one company representative to each town to coordinate and improve communication.“Despite repeated complaints to our [Eversource] liaison on a daily basis, the power outage continued forcing the Police Station to operate on an auxiliary generator,” Knickerbocker stated. “On numerous occasions, with fuel scarce, the unit came close to running out of fuel.”Towns are assigned a liaison from Eversource — someone they can relay issues to in a real-time basis to communicate a municipality’s emergency needs during a storm. But while Newtown First Selectman Dan Rosenthal said he was able to communicate with the liaison in town, he said the employee did not have access to “decision-makers” and that communications fell into a “black hole.”New Fairfield First Selectwoman Pat Del Monaco agreed, stating that 30 power line crews from Indiana were centrally staged in a New Fairfield parking lot on Aug. 6. Those crews stood in the parking lot until Aug. 8 without performing any work, she said, calling it a “poor allocation of resources.”Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi said he does not blame the liaison for the lack of action taken, but said the liaison was “unable to provide the most basic information” to the town due to an obvious failure within Eversource to provide accurate and timely information to its liaison.Eversource rebutted, stating “there were challenges during Isaias that resulted in a less efficient process than municipalities have come to expect.”The parent of a New Fairfield resident who suffers from cerebral palsy, is a quadriplegic and cancer survivor reached out to Del Monaco for help, the first selectwoman said in testimony. Their daughter — unable to regulate her body temperature due to a spinal cord injury — needed effective air conditioning during hot weather and was deprived of it in the days following Isaias when temperatures struck the upper 80s and 90s.“Throughout my conversations with Eversource, I was told that disabled customers aren’t entitled to ‘critical status’ and must make their own arrangements,” Del Monaco stated in testimony.Although power in the neighborhood was restored, the family remained without it because a wire to their house was disconnected. They called repeatedly for help but were turned away. Del Monaco said Eversource “illustrated a total lack of empathy.”“The family contacted Eversource Customer Service several times and was told that their daughter needed to prepare for another week without electricity or find a hotel room,” Del Monaco added.Eversource did not address this situation in its rebuttal testimony, but Gross, the company spokesman, attributed a larger power outage as the reason why power was not restored.“We feel for anyone who has an illness or a disability. As a precautionary step, before a storm hits, we reach out to customers who have registered with us as medical customers to remind them to take the necessary actions to prepare for the specific situations and needs in case they lose power. That’s as far as I can go,” Gross later told The News-Times.In Newtown, downed trees and wires prohibited local emergency personnel from accessing trapped patients at the Newtown Rehabilitation and Health Center on Toddy Hill Road for approximately two days after the storm.On Aug. 4, the fire department received a call for help with an unresponsive patient at the facility, according to an emergency report. Emergency responders tried getting through but were blocked by downed wires on the street. The town’s dispatch notified Eversource of the priority but did not receive a response, according to testimony from Rosenthal.Unable to get there by the road, ATVs were used to get to the facility and take the patient away.Power was not restored until Aug. 10 at the rehabilitation facility. At the Regency at Newtown, a senior community, power was not restored until Aug. 8.In Ridgefield, Marconi said a senior housing facility did not get power back until Aug. 9. Marconi also estimated 200 roads were inaccessible, many remaining closed until “over a week after the storm,” prompting emergency crews to use ATVs for wellness checks and to distribute food and water.“Because of the medical needs of many of the residents, including some who required oxygen, and the stifling heat during these days, Eversource’s failure threatened the lives of these senior residents,” he stated.“By the grace of God, no one lost their lives,” he added.

John and Rebecca Fung headed to the basement of their Newtown home with their three children on the afternoon of Aug. 4. The hot, humid weather took a turn as Tropical Storm Isaias made its way through the area, knocking down trees and limbs, eventually cutting off electricity to hundreds of thousands of Eversource customers around the state.On their street, the storm brought down wires, causing two electrical fires.“You could smell the burning in the air,” John Fung said.Fire department crews put out the fires by smothering the flames and notifying Eversource, according to testimony filed...

Blocked roads, a police station without power and a lost dog: Four Danbury area towns take aim at Eversource’s storm response

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