'Beyond Exasperating:' 42 Still Without Power In Ridgefield

RIDGEFIELD, CT — There are a little over 19,000 residences and businesses still without power in the state, and 42 of them are in Ridgefield. Gov. Ned Lamont declared a State of Emergency and has brought in the National Guard following the fast-moving weather system that stormed through the state late Thursday afternoon.

First Selectman Rudy Marconi said he was having difficulty getting an answer from Eversource as to when the town's power would be restored.

"This is beyond exasperating," Marconi said. "They will not tell us when we can expect a line crew into town. In spite of repeated phone calls and emails, Eversource is silent with respect to restoration."

In a news release, Eversource said most of their customers not living in Branford can expect power restoration by midnight Friday. Branford got hammered the hardest by the storm, and is not expected to see its lights come back on until sometime Saturday.

The new outages come at a particularly poor time for Eversource, whose recent rate increases, combined with long outage times following Isaias, have inspired widespread customer outrage and scrutiny by the Power Utility Regulatory Authority. The top brass from that utility were grilled all day Thursday by the Energy and Technology Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly.

Marconi is urging people who are without electricity to add their voice to those who were without power during Isaias by submitting an outage timeline and recount of their experiences to be included in the hearing of the case brought by the Public Utilities Regulation Authority for Connecticut against Eversource. Residents may share their outage info with PURA by sending emails to pura.information@ct.gov and reference Docket No. 20-08-03. Copy selectman@ridgefieldct.org.

The war stories should be concise, but detail:

• Personal experience
• How long without power
• Ability to communicate with Eversource
• Ability to travel in neighborhood or town (roads blocked)
• Fallen wires and trees not attended to
• Lost medication and food in refrigerator
• Immediate concern that this problem will happen all over again with the next major storm