Power company promises most service to be restored by Tuesday

Now the National Grid has taken over I see trucks all over the place! I wish we could always have small local companies get the work. Unfortunately you just can't beat the experience and resources of a behemoth like National Grid.

Promises, promises. As one who was without power in Townsend for a week, I feel for those people who are still without power ten days later.

Why didn't National Grid take over in the first place. Screw giving business to local companies. This local company has caused me and my disabled parents to not have power for the past 11 days. The Governor is supposedly going to investigate Unitil, in the meantime many people still don't have power/heat. Unitil should be held responsible and have to pay for all of the damages their negligence caused. Oh and BTW Unitil charges the highest utility rates in the state. I want Unitil banned from doing business in this state if they can't meet the needs of their customers.

Merry XMAS

Still no power for everyone in Lunenburg after 10 day's. It is up on my street but Unitil refuses to run a truck to my house to reconnect the 20 feet of line from thier network to my home. Unitil's solution was to call Nation Grid. They were at best flippant when I called to ask when they would fix the power. If you are in Lunenburg, we are determining what are options are to remove Unitil as the ulitility. If you ware intersted in helping to unload Unitil contact the board of selectmen and let them know Unitl goes or they do!

I've been without power for 11 days now and still i can't get a solid confirmation as to WHEN power will be back. It's ludicrous. In my opinion, UNITIL has done a horrible job with the restoration and should be fined or reprimanded at the very least.

Why cant National Grid take over permantly! They have the experience!

unitil should be banned from fitchburg. They need to get rid of them and
lisa wong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was the first day that there was a noticeable presence in Fitchburg...and all trucks said National Grid. It's about time Unitil did something about it.

Unitil has played with the trust of their customers and need to be held accountable. I think both negligent criminal changes and a class action civil suit are warranted under this circumstance.

11 Days without power in these towns seems insane. I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that a bigger spotlight has not been put on the complete inadequacies of Unitil to get power back to residence of central mass. People inside these effected areas have no voice to defend themselves and speak out against this failure because they are still without power. You can bet if this happened in a more dense location, the national news would be swarming at the complete failure of Unitil to serve it's customers in a time efficient manner.

Make no mistake, National Grid won't send out bills ten days late.

I have been without power since the storm. You would think for the price we pay to Unitil that they could have fixed the issues. I hope Lunenburg goes with another company to furnish the electric anything is better then Unitil.

Why didn't my comment get posted about what a terrible job Unitil is doing. I didn't use any profanity yet my comment isn't here. Unitil should be banned from doing business in MA/NH after this problem. I can only imagine if what would happen if a hurricane hit us. It would probably take Unitil a month. I hope we get power by XMAS.

Its a sad joke how Unitil provided support. Every single day I was told 'we are restoring your area today'. That is, when they would actually answer the phone. Not sure it helped but dozen of calls, to both Unitil and representative Hargraves seemed to finally get mine on.

Unitil should be ashamed of themselves.

We finally got power at our house in Ashby Sunday afternoon. We expected Comcast to restore TV and internet service fairly quickly, but when I contacted them today they told me - I kid you not - "We don't have a record of any outage in your area." After confirming we don't have service, they said they'd send somebody out Wednesday, December 24. When, my husband called back to confirm, they said "Oops, sorry, we won't be able to come until Friday December 26." So add Comcast to the list of companies that have handled this disaster badly.

Thats 1500 customers, not people. Customers does not include families, seniors, spouses, children, etc. It is very cold for many, many people right now, just trying to get by, men spending nights in 30 degree houses to protect and watch over their house, pregnant wives and children staying with relatives or in hotels. Most of us displaced with children are sick now. Pipes are starting to burst because it got cold over the weekend and sometimes power will go on for 2 hours, sometimes 10 hours since Sunday. I have neighbors getting by with generators, some with just a gas stove or gas fireplace, some with nothing. All the while still working full time, trying to get by. Yes, it's my pity party and I'll cry if I want to.

First we heard nothing from the power company or town, nobody to answer any questions, no information until last Thursday, when they said the primary grid in fitchburg will be 95% repaired by Thursday night, then they said Friday, then they said Saturday morning, then Sunday morning, now its Monday and there is no way to find out if and when power will be restored.

What they ought to do is pay for the generators and gas that everyone just had to spend to make their own power. I think, if you started a grassroots effort to remove Unitil, you'd find lots of help in the region including Mayor Wong- who rocks! But let's see if we can keep the hounds on Unitil. People have been paying thousands of dollars to get power, heat and light while Unitil did little. They ought to be reimbursed for their out of pocket expenses to provide for themselves what Unitil is contracted to provide.

I saw a lot more contractors then national grid trucks. why didnt unitil hire them?

here's an idea- move out of the sticks.

This deregulation has been a pretty awesome thing, eh?

Guess who was one of the primary movers behind it? Dianne Wilkerson.

One more thing to thank her for.

Thanks to all those linemen who worked tirelessly to restore power. This was a difficult situation that is nearly over. People in Texas still are without power since Hurricane Ike. Natural disasters answer to nobody. It does little good for Deval to complain about these people . Deval , you have lost our faith, and nothing can restore it.

"I'm governor, not king."

Really? Then stop acting like a king.

The Governor should quit whining and cast an eye toward his OWN response to the problems of the Commonwealth (and, Oh My Oh My, his former employer).

Is it me, or should the governor get some of the blame here? When a natural disaster such as this happens, isn't the government supposed to intervene and do what is necessary to help citizens in need? I just get the sense that he did nothing and now he's making some phone calls and assigning blame. Thanks for nothing!

"Governor, not king"- but aren't utilities subject to some state regulation? It's not like it's a problem the free market can easily solve- these companies have monopolies in their regions. Patrick's remarks are a serious cop-out.

What about a plan to start puting cables under ground and get rid of the poles? Start small and have a long range plan to get it done. Maybe this makes to much sense. Just think what could be acomplished.

I don't follow how the Gov. can share the feelings of those without power when he was comfortably sitting next to Bob Kraft in a box seat at the Pats game yesterday???

Don't badmouth the little companies. We have our own power company in Ashburnham and their response has been terrific. They did have the common sense to bring in plenty of contractors to help out with such a major catastrophe.

Cadillac DeVille Patrick, who never worked a real day in his life, thinks he knows how to run a utility company since he's done such a great job with the turnpike, MWRA, MBTA, etc.

Handed a $billion plus surplus from Romney, now $2 billion in debt and he cuts aid to the cities and towns.

Obama-Lite

#13, Sometimes the system here seems to boot you out if you take too long to compose your message. Copy your message before you post to get around this annoying limitation of boston.com.

How does one go about getting a utility company replaced? Anyone know how one would get started?

National Grid didn't have manpower to spare until Monday, they had like everyone in the company on full emergency crews working 16 hours a day through Friday

Are any of you familiar with the 1998 ice storm in Maine? Some of the conditions (e.g., more than one storm) are similar. Some people were without power for 20 days.

Comcast pulled the same crap on us as they did on Vicki - "no record of outage in your area", only they scheduled us for Jan 14th. We told them that with a toddler and a pregnant woman in the house there was no way on earth we were going to put up with not having phone service for 3 weeks. Our next call would be to Fairpoint to switch back to traditional phone service. Mysteriously, our connection started working again a few hours later.

Unitil has just been sucking the money out of the captive customers for years and never investing anything to maintain the infrastrcuture. When the CEO says that the whole infrastrcuture needs to be rebuilt, ask him how much of that is directly storm related versus years of lack of proper mainntenance. Much of the reason it is taking so long to get fixed is that so much needs to be replaced that should have been replaced years ago, but that would have cut into the extravagant corporate profits.

We'll be hearing them asking for rate increases and bail-out moeny very soon.

Plan on lots of lawsuits.

Blame DEREGULATION of the Electric utilities. Do you remember voting for it?
It sounded great, lower rates and all. Just like saving the greyhounds, people voted for the sound bite. I am sorry for all of the people affected by the electric outages. You have been through a lot. You must be a tough and resourceful group of individuals and I admire you. Words won't get your power restored. The damage done by the ice storm is massive. It is a huge natural disaster.
I hope you get your power restored by Tuesday and life gets back to normal for each and every one of you. On the bright side, all of your spring pruning chores are completed.

I'm in a pocket in lunenburg and there were multiple crews working in frigid temps and high winds today - i was back online at 2pm (about 30-40 of us neighbors) national grid and contratcors - not unitil. Comcast has a "special service ticket" to reconnect my line to my house - said 24-48 hrs...I believe that while no one could have forseen the extent of the damage, unitil could have handled it better with customer service and by asking for help sooner. surely they have a GIS system to map the lines, and after surveying,m the damage points and they could have been more accurate about telling people when to expect power back vs trying to hide or play politics. Good luck to everyone else!!

The governor should have offered to have the MBTA or MassPort or the Turnpike Authority to take over and "finish" the job. Those guys know how to get the job done on time and under budget. Right?

Unitil is the worst. If there is any way to get rid of them, it should be explored. Nation Grid is fixing everything after they they took care of their own customers (as they should) while Unitil is still no where to be seen.
$10 says they look for a rate hike soon to cover the cost of paying National Grid to fix their infrastructure.

Together We Can...

Blame all the tree huggers: Has anyone looked closely at that damage.
Most of it was caused by trees being planted to close to home and powerlines.
The towns are also to blame for not trimming trees over the last 10 years because of critism from these trr huggers.

I can feel for you, having ridden out numerous storms, Nor'Easters and a few hurricanes over the years, and lost power (...and phone service, and a couple of times even water) as a result. Just keep in mind: The logistics of any power outage anywhere in this Country (.. or any other, for that matter) are not always as simple as they may seem. Contrary to what some may think, there is no magical computer screen somewhere that is going to show where every line break is, what the cause of every outage is, the parts needed, etc., and there are times a cursory visual inspection of lines, poles, transformers, etc. doesn't readily show them, either. Sometimes power can be restored quite quickly, and sometimes it can literally take days, if not weeks, to track down every issue and restore power to every single person. Electricity is one of those things we all tend take for granted, since it's such a normal part of our modern lives, and we've come to expect it to be available in any situation, any time we need it, whenever we need it - It's times like these that drive home the finer points and reality of it all. ;-)

The power issue didn't seem to bother the gov when he was at the Patriots game where he was sitting with Bob Kraft in a nice dry warm luxury box. I hope he paid for his tickets.

Patrick is yelling about Fitchburg.

Strange. There are people destroying all animals living on or visiting the Charles River between the harbor and the Watertown dam.

Even more interesting, he is paying the salaries of a significant number of them.

Why is Patrick not yelling about the Charles River?

Or is he trying to keep the Charles River secret?

Finally, after remaining silent for so long while thousands of his constituents went without power, Deval Patrick has something to say. But all he says is, Hey there' s nothing I can do, I'm not king???? This is one of the weakest governors we've had in memory.

Governor Patrick is acknowledging what everyone will soon realize ... that there is no effective recourse with monopolies like Unitil that are holding companies that really don't give a damn.

My thoughts go out for everyone without power. There is no excuse for this to happen in the 21st century.

The towns in this story all invested heavily in the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant when they went with this company. (Unitil = Nuclear power from Seabrook.)

Don't worry, Unitil says nuclear power is safe. And you can trust Unitil. Right?

It is truely amazing that a company that charges some of the highest rates for electricity in the state is unable to provide basic service to their customers.

I understand this was a once in a lifetime storm and a great deal of infrastructure was damaged or destroyed so it is understandable it would take some time to repair the damage but this is absurd.

Unitil is unable or unwilling to coordinate anything except collecting on bills and buying additional companies to expand their little empire of useless promises and inept service.

I thank the work crews who have worked tirelessly in the cold and snow and the call center representatives for taking angry calls from customers. These people have taken the brunt of our anger and frustration while the people who are responsible for this situation sit in warm offices issuing vague press releases that mean nothing.

Unitil "We deliver It's that simple" great slogan but spend some time and money on servicing your customers rather than on PR.