110K households lost power
Staff report
The first major storm of the year brought nearly two feet of heavy, wet snow to the region and caused outages for 110,000 customers, according to Green Mountain Power.
“This storm ranked as one of the worst storms in recent history,” said Kristin Carlson, GMP’s vice president of strategy and external relations. “It was heavy and wet, like cement, and weighed down trees and wires.”
Almost half of GMP’s 270,000 customers lost power. Most of the damage was in central and southern Vermont.
“Clearing downed trees to get to outage locations has been slow and difficult,” said Mike Burke, GMP’s vice president of field operation in a press release.
Carlson said most power was expected to be restored by Monday, Dec. 19, while some lingering outages in remote locations would continue into Tuesday and Wednesday.
Carlson said GMP secured contractors from Canada, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York prior to the storm to help respond. GMP’s team was tripled to 450 line workers, 150 tree workers and 300 support staff. “The crews had to spend a lot of time proactively clearing roads to get to the outages as quickly as safety as possible,” Carlson said.
Killington received 22 1/2 inches of snow in town, according to the National Weather Service. The resort reported 25 inches. Rutland received 3 inches, Ludlow received 25 1/2 inches and Woodstock received around 16 1/2 inches.
“There was so much snow on the trees that that brought them down,” said Maureen Hastings, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
