Posted by Dennis Herrick on May 13, 2009 at 14:42:37:
Lunenburg official: Unitil put town at risk during ice storm
By Dan Magazu, dmagazu@sentinelandenterprise.com
Posted: 05/13/2009 11:25:20 AM EDT
BOSTON -- Unitil's unprepared, confused, and inadequate response to the Dec. 11 ice storm put people's safety in danger, officials from Lunenburg testified before the Department of Public Utilities this morning.
"The response of Unitil put members of the community and members of our public safety departments in added risk," Board of Selectmen Chairman Tom Alonzo said. "Their inability to act in a prompt manner hindered our efforts and hindered our residents ability to properly prepare for what would be a two week outage."
Lunenburg Fire Chief Scott Glenny, who is the town's Emergency Management Director, said the town received almost no information from the company immediately following the ice storm.
"It was quite a while before we ever received any contact from the power company itself," Glenny said. "When it did start to come in, the information we were getting was inaccurate. The number of crews that were in town and the dates and times they said power would be back on were incorrect."
Alonzo said the company kept informing the town that power would be substantially restored well before it actually was.
Residents could have avoided severe damage to their homes had they known from the beginning that the power would be out as long as it was, Alonzo said.
"People could have drained their pipes or done things to protect their furnace," Alonzo said.
Wednesday marks the third day of hearings before the Department of Public Utilities
on Unitil's response to the Dec. 11 ice storm, which left thousands of customers in Lunenburg, Fitchburg, Ashby and Townsend without power for up to two weeks. Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong and State Rep. Stephen DiNatale are at this morning's hearing. A panel from Fitchburg is scheduled to testify later today.
Check www.sentinelandenterprise.com later today for updates on this developing story, and read Thursday's Sentinel & Enterprise for complete coverage of the DPU hearings.