Johnston weathers storm’s wrath
A fast moving and powerful storm that began Sunday evening and continued into Monday morning left downed trees and power lines, some schools closed, and thousands of residents without power throughout town.
“I think National Grid dropped the ball, no doubt about it. We had businesses in town that lost probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Mayor Joseph Polisena on Wednesday. “Most people can tolerate a one day inconvenience, but two days, three days or more, come on.”
The storm left 154,000 National Grid customers across the state without electricity. According to National Grid spokesman Ted Kresse, as of Wednesday afternoon 455 Johnston customers were without power. At the height of the outages, 4,655 Johnston customers were without power, he said.
Mayor Polisena stated that he “flipped out” on National Grid on Tuesday. He said that he was on the radio with John DePetro, who was getting emails from listeners, and an email came in from a woman in Johnston saying that they were trapped on East and West Scenic View Drive and couldn’t get out.
“So I went up there and I said, “oh my God’ because, sure enough, they couldn’t get out. So I called National Grid yesterday and they said they couldn’t get there until tomorrow,” said Polisena.
“I said here’s the deal, if someone dies or if there’s a fire and God forbid someone dies, I’ll hold National Grid responsible. We have a saying in emergency medical services, minutes mean a lifetime. If someone dies because the rescue can’t get there or if someone dies in a fire, it’ll be National Grid’s responsibility. They then came an hour later. It looked like a bomb went off up there,” he added.
Kresse said, “I believe we’ll get a vast majority [of those without power statewide] back on line by tonight [Wednesday],” Kresse said.
There was good reason to think that could happen.
Reinforcements from as far south as Florida started arriving Tuesday morning. With dawn Wednesday the staging area at the Knight Campus of CCRI parking lot was lined with crews ready to follow Grid leaders into communities across the state. Kresse said there was a total of 94 crews representing more than 350 employees. He said that would be augmented by another 20 to 50 crews from New York that were expected to be in Rhode Island by Wednesday afternoon.
Gary Lataille, a member of Grid’s emergency planning was on site at CCRI Wednesday morning. He said Grid’s logistics section arranged for the influx of out-of-state crews, reserving hotel rooms and planning for box lunches while out on the job. He said crews are expected to work 16 hours before resting for at least eight hours.
“The key is not to have the trucks here,” he said.
Meanwhile, the CCRI lot filled with student cars, making for a hub of activity. At the staging area, crews were matched with their Grid guides and accessed stockpiled materials, including utility poles.
Polisena said that in situations presented in storms like these, if there are only trees down that are blocking a road, Department of Public Works (DPW) crews can move them with a backhoe and open lanes of travel. But if the trees are entangled in wires, crews are taking a chance on getting electrocuted. He said many in town have generators and sometimes the electricity can travel back into the wires.
“A lot of people in town don’t have municipal water, they have wells. So now they can’t use the bathroom facilities, or for cooking and so forth,” said Polisena. “It just wasn’t a good thing and I really, truly think that National Grid dropped the ball.”
Arnold Vecchione, Director of the DPW, didn’t escape the storm’s wrath. On Tuesday, he said that a tree at his home fell on top of his car. While damaged, he hopes the car can be saved. Vecchione said that his crews have worked tirelessly to clean the town’s streets.
“It was a brutal storm, let me tell you. It was a brutal storm for that short of a time period. We had the crew come in at one o’clock Monday morning and there were already several trees down,” he said. “Things are going well; our crews began to catch up yesterday with most of the damaged trees. They pushed most downed trees to the side of the road at first and then they’ll go back today and tomorrow to take all the trees off the side of the road.”
Both he and the mayor reiterated that town roads are passable right now and emergency vehicles and other services can access the town.
“There were some roads that were worse than others. I know that Scenic View Drive, that area was kind of shut down because the trees and wires were across both entrances to that area, so it was tough for them to get in and out,” said Vecchione.
For some Johnston students, the storm meant an extended weekend with two additional days off while others went to school later in the day.
“For the last two days we did an hour delay for both days on Monday and Tuesday. We had most of our schools open with the exception of Thornton and Brown Avenue. Those were the two schools that were without power for the two days, although Brown Avenue and Thornton had restored power by this morning, but it was too late to bring kids in at that point,” said Superintendent Dr. Bernard DiLullo Jr.
Those students who had the day off, however, will have to make those days up later in the year.
“Luckily, we didn’t have any damage to any buildings. There were a couple water spots on ceilings, but other than that there was nothing,” said DiLullo
An issue arose with the district’s automatic calling system, which caused a delay in notifying families that Thornton and Brown Avenue would be closed on Monday.
“So we found out about the electricity on Monday morning. I was in here about 7 o’clock and we found out about it. I did an All Call at 7:30, the students weren’t due in to school until 10 a.m. because of the hour delay,” said DiLullo. “What ended up happening with our All Call system, and it was a problem with the system itself and not the district, is I guess that they had such a backup of calls that the calls were queued in but they weren’t going out. So I had to call them and say our calls aren’t going out and it’s important that people get the calls because families need to be notified that these two buildings don’t have electricity.”
Polisena said that the schools made the right decision in delaying and closing. He credited the work of DPW crews this week, saying he would grade their performance as an “A plus.”
“These guys started at 1:30 in the morning and they haven’t stopped. They have gone above and beyond. A lot of them live in Johnston and their families didn’t have power, but they were out there freeing the roads and making sure that public safety was paramount first,” he said.
Polisena added that he thought the General Assembly should pass legislation that if power isn’t restored within 24 hours of a storm that National Grid should give each customer $25 per day until the power comes on.
“That might stimulate them to get the power back on. The General Assembly, they’re infamous for putting in legislation when something happens,” he said. “If I was up there, I’d file legislation that states if the power doesn’t come back on within 24 hours then they need to pay the customers $25 a day until the power is on. That would incentivize National Grid to bring in enough people.”
Kresse said the company was doing all it could to restore service.
“We are focused on restoring power to everyone in the state as quickly as possible. In Johnston, we are down to about 700 customers at this point without power,” he said. “We are doing everything possible, that’s less than 5 percent of our customer base up there, and it’s all hands on deck trying to get everyone up as quickly as possible and that’s our number one priority.”
(With reports from John Howell)
STAGED AND DEPLOYED: Gary Lataille, a member of National Grid’s emergency planning, at the staging area for out-of-state crews at CCRI in Warwick Wednesday, where they were deployed to restore power throughout the state. (Sun Rise photo)
