Tropical Storm Isaias Sparks Little Action from Eversource over Lost Power
Source: Westport Fire Department
By Antara Singh-Ghai '22
Hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents lost power in early August due to Tropical Storm Isaias, an outage that lasted over a week due to slow action by CT power company Eversource.
The tropical storm, which barreled through Connecticut on the 4th of August, quickly led to over 800,000 outages in Connecticut, a number Eversource was, by their own admission, wholly unprepared for.
Outages took several days to fix, leaving many Connecticut residents without electricity, wi-fi and sometimes water during a pandemic where many people are working from home.
Westport was one of the hardest hit areas in the state, with parts of the area around Greens Farms Academy taking well over a week to fix.
The power outage has led to an outpour of frustration on social media from many Connecticut residents and politicians, already angered even before Isaias by rate hikes during a pandemic in a state that already pays the highest rates for electricity in the nation and an aging, patchwork power network that has led to several devastating power outages in less than a decade. Social media sites such as Twitter and Reddit were alight with locals sharing their plight of trees down on top of power lines with no Eversource trucks in sight days after Isaias. Many prominent local politicians, including First Selectman of Westport Jim Marpe, State Senator Will Haskell, Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, vowed to launch an investigation into why response times were so slow.
This isn't the first time outages have occurred in Connecticut: in 2011 and 2012, storms in Connecticut and Hurricane Sandy left over 750,000 and 600,000 residents without power, respectively, totals just shy of the damage wreaked by Tropical Storm Isaias. Outrage was also widespread, though little action was ultimately taken to ensure that nothing similar would happen again.
Northeast Utilities, the owner of Connecticut Light and Power, rebranded itself and all of its subsidiaries as Eversource Energy in 2015. CT Light & Power, the company responsible for the numerous outages of 2011 and 2012 in Connecticut, became Eversource CT, the agency responsible for the state-wide outages in early August and the ones in northern Connecticut later in the month.
Connecticut Public Utilities Regulation Authority (PURA), has launched an investigation into Eversource, though it is unclear what, if any, action will be taken.