Hundreds of Roads Impassable, Schools Closed, 90000 Without Power After Deadly Storm Hits Connecticut
May 17, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
More than 90,000 homes remain without power, scores of roads are impassable and schools are closed early Wednesday after a powerful and deadly chain of storms swept across Connecticut Tuesday evening. Hundreds of crews are continuing the lengthy effort to address the damage as weather officials investigate whether a tornado touched down in southwestern Connecticut.
Officials have little idea how long it will take to clean up the damage that has left some trapped in their homes. Some town leaders issued states of emergency.
At least two people were killed and many more injured when the storm swept through western Connecticut. In Danbury’s Candlewood Lake section, a man was killed after he took refuge from the storm in his truck and a tree fell on the vehicle, Mayor Mark Boughton said.
Responders had to use a boat to reach the man because roads were filled with fallen trees; by the time they reached the man, it was too late, Boughton said.
A state police spokeswoman said a tree fell on a car on Brush Hill Road in New Fairifield, a 41-year-old woman was killed. A 3-year-old passenger was not hurt.
Though more than 15 hours had past, nearly 90,000 power outages across much of western, central and southern Connecticut remained as people awoke Wednesday morning to take in the extent of the devestation.
Eversource officials said early Wednesday that they were bringing in crews from New Hampshire and across Massachusetts to assist the full complement of Connecticut-based crews. They said the company was also taking on additional tree contractors to clean roads.
“We are estimating a multiple-day restoration day here,” said Frank Poirot, a company spokesman. “With 84,000 people still without power, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
By early Wednesday, 17 state roads were closed for downed trees and power lines, a state Department of Transportation spokesman said. No interstates were blocked by Wednesday morning. Crews were working through the night on cleaning up where possible.
“It’s nothing that’s not manageable. We’ve had crews out around the state. There’s been different levels of impact as you move around the state,” said Kevin Nursick, a DOT spokesman.
Despite issues Tuesday, Metro-North said early Wednesday that it plans to run a normal schedule of trains through the day.
National Weather Service issued tornado warnings – meaning a tornado was occurring or about to occur – in five of the state’s eight counties. The NWS will spend the next few days determining whether a tornado actually hit the state, or if it was simply a violent thunderstorm. Two residents of Brookfield, however, said they thought they saw the funnel of a tornado early Tuesday evening.
About 9 a.m., the weather service said teams were dispatched Wednesday to survey damage in Brookfield, Danbury, New Milford, Newtown, Oxford, Ridgefield, Southbury, Winsted, Bethany, Hamden, Cheshire and Durham.
The weather service said a rare weather event was recorded Tuesday when the rapid drop in air pressure caused what its known as a “meteotsunami,” or a large wave created by this change in weather.
The damage was most severe in the Danbury region, the area of Cheshire, Hamden and the Naugatuck Valley, and state’s northeast corner.
In Danbury, a teen was badly injured when he was struck by the roof of a dugout on the baseball field at Henry Abbott Technical High School. Powerful winds apparently peeled the roof off the dugout, Boughton said.
“He’s banged up pretty good,” Boughton said. “It’s very serious.”
In Brookfield, a man and woman suffered nonlife threatening injuries when a tree fell on them while they were walking along the Still River Greenway, according to Brookfield First Selectman Stephen C. Dunn. The couple crawled to the nearby police station where they got first aid, but police officials said it took a long time to get them an ambulance as roads were largely blocked.
“It’s a real mess,” Dunn said Tuesday night of the damage in Brookfield, which prompted him to declare a local emergency. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it. There are literally hundreds of trees down, wires down, many roads are impassable. Most of our roads are impassable.”
By morning, Dunn said the situation remained dire. He said all of the roads in town had downed wires and that there was a citizen corps in some neighborhoods out with chainsaws to make roads passable.
Police officials said they have 160 personel from roughly 20 agenices in town to help, including the state’s Urban Search and Rescue Team, as well as emergency EMS and fire task forces. Many were out through the night checking on the well-being of residents trapped by the downed trees. The DOT dispatched six front-end loaders and three tree crews to help crews access areas of Brookfield, but officials said travel is limited and people should remain in their homes.
In Hamden, emergency crews found roads so impassable they resorted to using TV vehicles to respond to medical calls, Mayor Curt Leng said. “We are having many, many issues throughout town,” he wrote in an email. Busy Route 10 was closed in both directions, halting traffic through the morning rush hour.
In the northern part of Hamden, fallen trees trapped some residents in their homes and blocked off most of the roads. Many of the downed trees were entangled in wires that needed to be deactivated by utility companies, Leng said.
On Sorghum Mill Drive in Cheshire, a tree fell into a house, crashing through the two-car garage. Noel and Chris Fletcher have lived in the home for more than six years, and though they’ve had other storms through the area, Noel Fletcher said “nothing has caused this much damage.”
Noel Fletcher was home with her daughter at the time of the storm, when the sky turned “pitch black” around 5:15 p.m. The two went to their basement and that’s when Noel heard what she thinks was the large tree land on their garage.
Cheshire police Chief Neil Dryfe said some of his officers ferried firefighters into a Hamden neighborhood in a police cruiser to respond to a propane leak, because the fallen trees and lines made bringing in a truck impossible.
Dryfe said about 20 streets were “totally impassable.”
“It’s as bad as I’ve seen it here since that October snowstorm five or six years back,” he said.
Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at the Western Connecticut State University’s Weather Center, said two lines of powerful thunderstorms moved into Connecticut Tuesday afternoon. The arrived in Litchfield County about 3 p.m. and moved east toward Granby and Somers, where it weakened. On the way, it dropped damaging hail and rain, with strong winds.
