The Wait for Power Continues

While the Village center in East Hampton came back to life on Friday, there are several areas in town that remained without power.

Affected residents held out hope that their turn to get power would come soon as utility crews busily worked on their street. Some, however, were not going to believe it until they see it.

“It’s been frustrating to watch the trucks [Thursday]. There were five trucks here sitting, waiting for CL&P to give them the green light,” Deena of Clark Hill Road said. “They said they can’t touch anything without CL&P’s permission. They sat on the side of the road for five hours not working.

Monitoring CL&P's progress on its web site and the expected time to get power back has only added to the frustration.

“Every day on the [CL&P] web site the time changes," she said. "The latest one was [Friday night].”

Through six days of no power, not every experience has been negative, however.

“Neighborly, it’s been great,” Deena said. “Everybody has been really very neighborly as far as helping each other and stuff like that. But it’s definitely been wearing on my patience.”

Still there were blessings to be counted. There were no reported injuries in East Hampton or Portland or damage to homes or businesses. Any flooding has been limited to basements.

“This sucks, but we have it better than the people in Vermont,” said Pete, also of Clark Hill Road.

“And even people down at the shoreline,” Deena said. “People have it worse than we do.”

Over on Hog Hill Road, residents there too were putting a positive spin on the situation. The good news there was that some power had been restored to the street and workers were close by tending to a utility pole.

“I think that people generally have done as well as they can do under the circumstances,” Heath Fahle said. “Everybody has been really friendly and working together to help everybody out, checking on their neighbors and that kind of thing. It’s been difficult, but we’ll get through it.”

Fahle and at least one of his neighbors had large trees that needed to be cleaned up. Between that and eating out a lot, Hurricane Irene didn’t come without some expense.

“Just the cleanup costs are expensive,” he said. “It’s just one of those things. It’s happened. Just kind of an unexpected cost.”

Fahle, who has lived in town for about a year, reflected on this year's weather then put the storm in perspective.

“At this rate, we had a 20-year winter and a 20-year storm,” he said. “So, I feel like I’m good for 20 years or so.”

According to some residents, there had been reports that at least two generators had been stolen from the Hog Hill area. Fahle had not heard of that. Residents should report any suspicious activity to police.

As of early Saturday morning, East Hampton had about 1,600 homes or businesses still without power. Portland had a little under 500 and East Haddam had around 2,700.

Residents are reminded that East Hampton High School will be open Saturday through Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for bottled water, showers, snacks, Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), charging of electronics and more. Residents may also bring containers to fill up on water using the hose outside the main entrance at any time this weekend.