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Rell launches probe to see if CL&P held back crews over weekend
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Written by Gov. M. Jodi Rell
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Wilton Bulletin
© Copyright 2010 Hersam Acorn Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.
Published On March 16, 2010
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Following an Associated Press report Tuesday morning that CL&P held back workers this weekend to avoid paying overtime when much of southwestern Connecticut lost power from the heavy storm, the governor has launched a probe into the utility’s actions.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell today announced she has asked the Department of Public Utility Control and the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security to examine the actions of the state’s two largest electric utilities — Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating — in the initial hours of the weekend storm that contributed to the deaths of at least three people, downed thousands of trees and tree limbs, snapped hundreds of utility poles and left nearly 100,000 Connecticut homes and businesses without power.
As of this morning, more than 39,000 CL&P customers and more than 700 UI customers were still without power.
Rell said she heard from many municipal leaders, fire and police chiefs and emergency management officials who complained that the utility companies were slow to respond to the storm Saturday night and Sunday. The officials told the governor they had trouble reaching utility officials — often getting voice mail or no answer at all — and said they saw relatively few utility crews on the job in the first two days of the storm.
“This was a huge storm that did serious damage — miles of wire and dozens of utility poles were affected,” Gov. Rell said Tuesday. “Thousands of Connecticut residents remain without power even now — three days after the storm, with nighttime lows still dipping into the 30s. And it is flatly unacceptable for a fire or police official to be unable to reach a ‘real person’ at a utility company in the middle of an emergency. We need to know what went wrong, why it happened and how to keep it from happening again.
“I have asked DEMHS and the DPUC to look at the initial communication problems and to pull individual work crew records for Saturday and Sunday,” the governor said. “I want to know whether all the necessary resources were out there as quickly and for as long as they should have been. Too many people are still without power and too many questions are unanswered.”
More than 1,200 customers in Wilton was without power for much of Saturday night and most of Sunday. Late this morning, more than 400 still did not have power.
The Associated Press is reporting charges that CL&P held back crews in the Darien area over the weekend to avoid paying overtime.
Connecticut Light & Power Co. is denying allegations it delayed responding to power outages caused by the weekend’s storm because it didn’t want to pay some crews double time for working longer shifts, the Associated Press reports.
In southwestern Connecticut, there are more than 40,000 customers without power.
The AP reports that officials of Local 457 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers say CL&P set a schedule for linesmen Saturday and Sunday that avoided a higher double-time pay rate and delayed power restoration to some customers. One union official says only 25 percent of workers were allowed to work overnight.
CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross denied the allegations and says the company’s response has been aggressive, according to AP.
State regulators say they’re investigating about 20 complaints about CL&P’s response to the outages, the AP reports.
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