Power Outages In Granby, East Granby Leave More Than 100 Still In The Dark

Although Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) has restored electric service to the vast majority of Granby and East Granby following the effects of Hurricane Sandy, 127 CL&P customers are without power in the two towns as of early Friday morning.

, Granby and East Granby’s combined percentage of residents without power, about 1.5 percent, is low — but that fact is cold comfort to those in the towns still lacking power.

Power outages in East Granby are concentrated around Hatchet Hill Road, the result of wires knocked down Monday evening, and on Hemlock Road near Lake Basile. In Granby, residents of upper Silkey Road and Barn Door Hills were without power Thursday, among others.

East Granby had 16 total customers lacking power early Friday and one, Dave Smith, passed along this message to share with Granby-East Granby Patch readers Thursday evening.

“I live on Hemlock Road in East Granby and there's a couple wires down and we have at least 7 or 8 houses without power, so this means that almost half of the outages left in East Granby are on this road alone,” Smith wrote. “We had an assessment car drive through yesterday and made note of the lines and now we have two cars guarding the wires on our cul-de-sac.”

Smith said that following last year’s late October snowstorm, his neighborhood near Lake Basile lost power for 12 full days and advocated for system upgrades to CL&P’s power grid.

“Tree cutting trucks spent three weeks culling trees this summer and the wires are still a mess,” he wrote. “All that got done last October were some half-[hearted] patch jobs to get the power back on and we're paying for that again this year.”

For Granby’s Anna Sogliuzzo, who lives off of Route 219 in Granby, more than 48 hours without power — “Just long enough to trash everything in our fridge,” she said — ended Thursday afternoon. But Sogliuzzo was quick to note that serious weather events are causing more and more of an impact on Granby, East Granby, the state and other at-risk areas of the country.

“Things like these storms happen more and more often,” she said, noting that her family is considering getting a generator. “This is just happening too regularly.”

Despite getting power back, the lack of official restoration estimates was a source of frustration for Sogliuzzo. She made sure to note that while the lack of power was difficult, the problems experienced in much of the local area paled in comparison to the devastation incurred on the Connecticut shoreline, in New York City and in parts of New Jersey.

Although the Sogliuzzos took more thorough precautions because of the difficulties following last year’s storms, they were still happy to get power back.

“I’m really happy it’s over,” she said. “Three [storms] in a year is a bit much.”