Hurricane Sandy Hit East Lyme's Power Lines The Hardest

Connecticut Light & Power reports that it has restored power to more than 350,000 customers since Hurricane Sandy blew out all the candles on Monday. 

But if you've checked CL&P's outage map lately, you'll have noticed that though just over half of Lyme has power back, 71 percent of CL&P customers in Old Lyme and 88 percent in East Lyme still have no power.

While that's an improvement over yesterday—when both towns were almost completely in the dark—East Lyme currently has the highest percentage of people without electricity in the entire state. The second highest is Stonington (80 percent), and Old Lyme is right up there at number seven. 

The problem is obvious to anyone who's driven around East Lyme since the storm struck. Hurricane Sandy blew over a lot of very large trees and ripped out a huge number of the town's power lines. What is less obvious to the casual observer is that the storm did extensive damage to key connections.

• A circuit knocked out on Route 161 heading north killed power to Salem, where 70 percent of CL&P's customers are without power.
• Niantic got a double-whammy when a substation between Tires Plus on Flanders Road and Hope Street went offline and a pole in the woods behind Damon Heights in Niantic came down that carried not one but three primary lines that transmitted power from Tires Plus down to the Morton House. A circuit also went down on Route 156.  
• East Lyme's line troubles also affect Old Lyme. Two power lines, one in Giants Neck and another by Stone's Ranch carry power to Old Lyme too. 

Eleven CL&P line crews worked day and night yesterday trying to restore power and they made some headway. As of 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 97 percent of East Lyme had no power but CL&P managed to bring that number down by 10 percent long before dawn to turn the lights back on in Flanders Elementary School.

In his 6 p.m. YouTube briefing, East Lyme First Selectman Paul Formica told residents (who were presumably watching him online using battery-powered smart phones or tablets) that even if they didn't see CL&P crews out and about, linesmen were on the job and working overtime to bring back the light. 

"We're trying the best we can to get this going," Formica said. "We should see some progress."

The good news is that, given the number of people and towns served by the lines that are down, when CL&P does fix the problem, Formica said, "a whole host" of people will get power back.