After 11 days, electric company hopes to wrap up ice storm repair work

By Globe Staff

Nearly 1,200 homes remain without power today in a cluster of four central Massachusetts towns, 11 days after an ice storm wreaked havoc with the electrical distribution system in the area. But the power company says it hopes it have almost all of them connected by the end of the day.

“We’re hoping to get it all done,” except for a few isolated outages, said George Gantz, senior vice president at Unitil.

The number of homes without power in Fitchburg, Lunenburg, Townsend, and Ashby was down from about 2,500 on Monday.

Gantz said 320 crews deployed Monday will continue working today. The toughest spot, he said, is “an entire circuit rebuild” that was necessary in the town of Ashby.

“You can feel the excitement over here in terms of getting the additional resources and being able to do the job right,” Gantz said. “We’re going to be all very, very happy to get this job done.”

The prolonged outages created a current of anger among residents and town officials, the Globe reports this morning.

“There’s clearly a discernible level of anger out there, and everybody is asking the question why,” said Greg Barnes, town administrator in Townsend. “Why is it taking so long?”

Gantz said the problem was the magnitude of the Dec. 12 storm. “Substantial portions of our system were destroyed and had to be rebuilt,” he said.

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