Nature's gnarled morass yields little to utilities

Scope of ice damage, access problems hinder crews

Downed limbs and lines still cover many back roads near Hubbardston, including New Westminster Road. (Globe Staff Photo / Suzanne Kreiter)

HUBBARDSTON - A caravan of bucket trucks rolled through the center of this rural community yesterday morning with a massive repair effort in front of them.

After a brief meeting on the shoulder of Route 68, crews of workers split up about a dozen trucks and headed for areas where tree limbs, shattered by last week's devastating ice storm, pulled down electrical lines or cracked poles.

In every wooded area throughout the region, cracked trees almost outnumbered untouched ones, and along every road, large piles of twisted branches had been placed to be picked up. Downed power lines were everywhere.

Yesterday crews restored electricity to about 520 more homes in Hubbardston, leaving about 980 still without power. Power had been restored to about 82 percent of the 325,000 homes and businesses in its eastern New England service area that lost it.

"This is probably one of the largest efforts we've put together," Deborah Drew, spokeswoman for National Grid said, referring to the massive repair effort in the central and western regions of the state.

Drew said that despite tracking the storm before its arrival and prepackaging "storm kits" consisting of every item needed to get power lines up and running, National Grid officials were nevertheless taken back by the amount of damage the tempest caused.

"We drill two or three times a year for situations just like this, but we certainly can't predict exactly what's going to happen in a given weather event," Drew said. "The assessed damage was more voluminous than originally thought. There have been some delays, not by a tremendous amount, but by hours. For customers, we realize that hours can seem like days, so we're working around the clock."

Those delays, according to Drew, were mostly due to the tons of tree limbs that fell on roads, creating blockades that had to be cleared before the trucks could approach downed power lines. Other delays were the result of coordination with phone companies, which run smaller poles and lines along the same routes as electric companies.

As soon as the storm had cleared Friday, National Grid workers were out surveying the damage and clearing inaccessible roads, Drew said. As more reports of widespread damage came in, National Grid expanded its response effort, she said.

Stephen O'Brien, a road crew supervisor, called yesterday's effort in the Merrimack Valley region a "full court press."

National Grid, with help from the Public Service Enterprise Group utility from New Jersey and small subcontractors, put more than 120 workers and 37 bucket trucks along a 26-mile stretch that included Hubbardston, Westminster, and Gardner.

The crews worked along two "feeder lines," or main power lines. Those lines provide for "side taps" that run along smaller roads.

On New Westminster Road, four trucks stopped to begin repairs to a downed line. A new pole had already been erected to replace one snapped by a tree. As two men with goggles and chain saws worked to reduce the debris covering the lines on the shoulder of the road, two men were hoisted inside buckets to the top of the new pole. The workers slowly lifted the downed line with gloved hands.

About 2 miles away, a National Grid manager, Jon Gonynor, surveyed heavier damage. A power line that ran through a forest sustained heavy damage. "Our trucks can't get to that, so we're going to have to bring in special equipment," Gonynor said.

Standing over a twisted pile of power lines and tree limbs, Gonynor shook his head when asked how long it would take to repair such extensive damage.

"It'll take awhile," he said.