Whacked

Grid hopes to have power fully restored Friday

By ALEX MALM
Posted 10/28/21

About 2,700 National Grid customers remained without power in Warwick on this morning according to Ted Kresse, spokesperson for National Grid. At one point more than 12,000 Warwick customers were …

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Whacked

Grid hopes to have power fully restored Friday

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About 2,700 National Grid customers remained without power in Warwick on this morning according to Ted Kresse, spokesperson for National Grid. At one point more than 12,000 Warwick customers were without power as winds with gusts of 60 miles per hour coupled with downpours hit the city starting Tuesday and not subsiding until Wednesday evening.

With Halloween just days away the storm also had a major impact to at least one Halloween display, as Danny Hall told the Warwick Beacon Thursday morning that he wouldn’t be able to have his annual display anymore this year which has raised over $2,000 this year for the Gianna Cirella Memorial Fund,

As of this morning Kresse said there were 159 outages in Warwick impacting the 2,700 customers

He said that the outages vary in the amount of customers with some impacting a few customers while others affected hundreds.

Once crews were able to begin working they concentrate first on public safety concerns and then transitioned to critical customers, which includes places like nursing homes, hospitals, and public safety facilities.

“Our crews are deployed and assisting with damage & restoration efforts where conditionsmhave been deemed safe from the powerful Nor’easter impacting the region,”

National Grid postedon Facebook on Wednesday morning. “Our first priority is responding to emergencies, opening roads and restoring critical locations.”

From there they moved to the outages that impacted the greatest number of customers.

In total Kresse said about 100,000 National Grid Ocean State customers lost power during the storm.

He expected most Warwick customers to have their power restored by Friday.

One of the major issues with the storm that Kresse pointed to was downed trees throughout the State.

“There was quite a bit of tree damage,” Kresse said.

As of this morning Kresse said that the company had 200 line crews and 74 forestry crews working in Rhode Island.

As for his Halloween display, Hall explained that he spent about 30 days setting up his annual display, which came down in about eight hours. He said that they were doing okay throughout the storm until about 6 a.m. when a large wind gust came through and knocked over his props which led to a domino effect of them being knocked over one by one.

Hall said that he had about $1,500 worth of electronic props that are no longer good and because of the amount of damage to his display overall he felt that he wouldn’t be able to set it up again in time for Halloween.

The School District was one of many across the state that made the call to go with a distance-learning day on Wednesday, making the call early on Wednesday morning.

On Thursday schools were back in session except for Scott Elementary School.

“All Warwick Schools except for Scott Elementary are open today, Thursday,

October 28th. All buses are running as scheduled,” the email to parents across the District stated. “Scott Elementary students will have remote learning today.

Principal Virginia Bolano will be sending a more detailed message shortly.”

The Warwick Beacon was one of those businesses that lost power. Although equipped with a generator designed to automaticallypower up with the loss of electricity, which it did, the power was erratic causing computers to fail and forcing a delay in publication.

The Warwick Beacon was one of the Warwick businesses that remained without phone service in Warwick as of this morning due to the storm.

On Wednesday night Mayor Frank Picozzi brought a positive message to Facebook regarding his annual Christmas display.

“Yes, my rooftop Christmas display items survived the wind,” he wrote.

storm, grid

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