After several days of virtually no or little progress on restoration, Newtown has seen the greatest dip in outages with nearly 1,700 homes and businesses regaining their power during the past 15 hours.
Outages now affect 69-percent of the town, or 7,612 homes as of about 3 p.m. Immediately following the October storm, 97-percent of the town was in the dark. All of South Main Street and Main Street in the borough as well as Church Hill Road from Main Street to Interstate 84 saw their power return.
The progress may be as a result of having more crews in town. As of Wednesday, 14 line crews were to have been working in town, according to Connecticut Light & Power liasion Jacqui Borges King.
The priorities were to get commercial centers, such as Main Street; South Main Street; and Queen Street and Church Hill Road, up and running. First Selectman Pat Llodra also requested that Sandy Hook center be moved higher in the priority, upset that this request had not been heeded Tuesday night. Instead, CL&P apparently re-powered Newtown High School, which Llodra said was not a priority as schools have been canceled for this week.
"What I'm not hearing is our commercial center," Llodra told Borges King during a Wednesday morning meeting at the Emergency Operations Center.
Borges King said that she would follow up to make sure the crews knew that Sandy Hook center was a priority.
Walnut Tree Village, which has senior housing, also was to have been high in the priority and restored as soon as possible, possibly by Wednesday. Part of Nunnawauk Meadow, another senior housing run by the federal government, also was to have been fully repowered although that won't happen until Friday due to complications with the repairs, officials said. Part of the complex has been restored.
As far as the rest of town, CL&P said that it expects to have 99-percent of Newtown restored by 11:59 p.m., Saturday.
Fire Marshal Bill Halstead said that volunteer firefighters have fielded hundreds of calls over the past several days.
In addition, since the start of the storm, firefighters have responded to 70 or so calls involving possible carbon monoxide poisoning. Tuesday night, a household of six people had to be evacuated from Miya Lane after the exhaust pipe from a generator was somehow turned into the residence as a result of the freezing and heavy dew conditions, Halstead said.
"Thank God they have a CO detector," he said.
There have been no serious injuries or fatalities reported in town as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
In terms of clearing roads, the town has logged 80 spots where downed wires and trees is making roadways hazardous. Officials said that there were about 22 or so roads with wire and tree obstructions blocking travel.
While officials gave statistics on the situation, they declined to release a list of affected roads, saying that conditions were changing and they did not want to release the list in the interest of public safety.
Finally, while many of the downed wires are power lines, CL&P said that half of instances are of downed telephone or cable wires, which would require those utilities to clear them.
Editor's note: The headline for this article has been revised since it was originally published.
