Storm causes widespread power outages

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A Northwest Corner power outage caused by severe thunderstorms on Tuesday night has forced a skeleton crew of Lakeville Journal staffers to decamp to the offices of The Millerton News, which is also owned by The Lakeville Journal Company.

The Journal will not be printed today, June 11, on its normal schedule, and distributed on June 12. If power is restored on Thursday morning, as anticipated, The Journal and The Millerton News will be printed on Thursday, June 12, and distributed on Friday, which is perhaps appropriately the 13th day of the month.

Updates and some stories will be released throughout the day here at The Lakeville Journal Company’s Web site, tcextra.com.

The Journal’s offices are in the village of Lakeville, in the town of Salisbury, where an estimated 86 percent of Connecticut Light and Power customers were without electricity from late Tuesday night through Wednesday. As of noon Wednesday, representatives of the power company said that some customers in the Northwest Corner were likely to remain in the dark at least until late Thursday, June 12.

At noon Wednesday, CL&P’s Web site at cl-p.com/stormcenter/outage.aspx reported the following percentages of customers without power:

North Canaan, 75.54
Falls Village, 18.71
Sharon,27.83
Salisbury, 60.91
Kent, 5.25
Cornwall, 38.81

Those numbers were substantially lower than they had been earlier that morning, when it was estimated that Kent had 17 percent of customers without power and Sharon had 42 percent without power. However, these percentages changed throughout the day, increasing as CL & P continued working to restore power around downed trees, telephone poles and limbs. If you have power, and you do if you're reading this, go to the above Web site for CL & P for up-to-date information.

Director of community relations at Sharon Hospital, Jill Musselman, said power went down at the hospital at 10 p.m. Tuesday, June 10, and came back up at 3 a.m. Wednesday. "But we have double generator backup, so we are well covered," Musselman said. Musselman also reported that Dr. Gene Chin, head of the emergency room, said there were no more patients or injuries than usual for this time of the year. "The hospital has to do certain things to prepare for storms like this, and we were prepared," Musselman said.

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, the state police barracks at Troop B in North Canaan reported there were no injuries they knew of related to the storm. And, also at that time, they said, the majority of Falls Village, North Canaan and Salisbury were still out of power.

The rural section of North Canaan known as East Canaan was reportedly one of the hardest hit areas. While homes and businesses in the rest of the town were back online in the morning, East Canaan remained in the dark.

The saddest numbers on the power company Web site were next to the town of Norfolk. At noon, even as other towns were beginning to emerge from the dark, the power company was still reporting that an astounding 101.14 percent of CL&P customers were without power.

Fortunately, tree limbs and power lines weren’t the only things that dropped during Tuesday’s storm. Temperatures also came down to about 80 degrees. It felt like spring, compared to the extreme heat and humidity of the past week.

Local lakes and ponds were packed with swimmers and sunbathers on Wednesday. The Region One schools were closed for the day. Three of the six elementary schools were without power. There was a tree down at Cornwall Consolidated. Initially, Superintendent Patricia Chamberlain had called for a 90-minute delay, but by around 8:20 a.m. Wednesday that had been changed to a shutdown of all the elementary schools and Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

In many ways, it was an excellent week for students in the region. They were dismissed at 1 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, because of the heat, as were many other schools on the East Coast.

Chamberlain said she could not remember the schools ever closing because of heat before but explained that “It’s unusual for temperatures to be this high this time of year. Many parts of the schools are not air conditioned properly if at all. It just is not safe for the kids.â€

The unsafe condition of area roads factored into the decision to close the schools on Wednesday. Many roads were blocked by downed trees and power lines.

Although students are enjoying a particularly fine summer day today, they will have to pay the price later this month. Today’s shutdown pushes the last day of school from June 18 to June 19. There will be a half day of school on June 18 and June 19. Graduation ceremonies will continue as planned (beginning with Cornwall Consolidated School on June 12 and ending with Housatonic on June 18).

The exam schedule for high school students will not be impacted by today’s closure. However, students were scheduled to have review days today and Thursday. Instead they will only have one review day.

That is assuming, of course, that the roads are cleared and power is back on by Thursday morning. By Wednesday afternoon, many roads that had been shut down in the morning were beginning to open up again. Power company trucks were spread out around the Northwest Corner, rebuilding power lines and poles. The phone and cable companies also had trucks out doing repairs.