Roughly 148,000 RI National Grid customers without power at height of storm

October 30, 2017 3:11 pm

At the height of the storm roughly 148,000 customers in Rhode Island were without power following Sunday night’s storm.

The number of outages is thousands more than lost power during Super Storm Sandy.

"It’s a significant challenge for all of us,” said National Grid Spokesman Ted Kresse.

National Grid sent out roughly 160 crews to clean up. We’re told they will be working around the clock.

Kresse says while the goal is to restore power as quickly as possible, it could take days to fix the problems fully.

"Every situation is different. We’re at a road here in Cranston and there’s a tree that went into a line so at this point we’re waiting for the tree cutters to come and get that tree out of the line,” said Kresse.

One of the biggest problems for National Grid’s crews on Monday was the wind. Crews can’t go up in those bucket trucks when it gets too gusty.

"We don’t want to put any of our guys in jeopardy,” said Kresse.

The prolonged outages certainly caused a mess on the roads. Many intersections were left in the dark for much of the day.

Kent County Hospital and Memorial Hospital were without power briefly following the storm, but Kresse says they quickly worked to restore power there.