National Grid working to restore power to tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders after Henri
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) – On Monday, National Grid crews were stationed across the state working to restore power to tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders who were left in the dark when Tropical Storm Henri passed through.
The interim president of National Grid Terence Sobolewski said Monday that the vast majority of restorations will be done by Tuesday night, but some could take longer.
As of Monday afternoon, more than 35,000 National Grid customers were still without power. By Monday evening, that number fell below 25,000.
“(It’s) not very comfortable, an inconvenience mostly,” said Nancy Wells of Coventry.
Wells lives in a mobile home park that lost power around noon on Sunday.
“What I feel bad about is a lot of elderly live here and the temperatures in these trailers get very hot very quick. There’s a lot of elderly that live here, people on oxygen, all kind of health problems,” she said.
Her mobile home reached almost 80 degrees on Monday, and she rushed to store her refrigerated food at her daughter’s house.
She said she’d like to see the state prioritize mobile home parks during power outages, as they typically house seniors.
“I know everybody wants to be first to get fixed, I understand that and they’ve got to do the most people first, but some consideration should be made for mobile home parks.”
During our interview, her power turned back on, hours before the estimated restoration time.
Down the road in Exeter, an independent radio station lost power on Sunday morning, and hosts spent the day waiting for it to turn on.
“We lost power yesterday closer to 10:00 a.m., and it’s been out ever since,” said Jamie Jones, vice president of Classical 95.9 WCRI. “I know all along here on Route 2 has been out of power.”
Jones said the outage will impact the station’s content for the week.
“It makes it tough,” he said. “Our tower is on Block Island where the signal comes from but any of the local content, so the news, weather, local shows that we put on all comes out of here, out of the studio, and we can’t do anything. We’re pretty much stuck in the dark!”
The station had its power back by Monday afternoon.
For information on restoration times in your area, click here.
© WLNE-TV 2021
