With customers in the dark and bitter, utilities defend effort

Last night, Doris Poindexter and five members of her extended family, moved into their third hotel room since Friday. The family, whose Townsend home lost power Thursday night during an ice storm that crippled parts of the region, has had trouble staying put because many area hotels are overbooked.

The increasingly stressed family is running out of money - and patience. Their electric company told them their power wouldn't be restored until at least Christmas Eve, a week from now.

"It's really horrible - just hard to believe it could take this long," said Poindexter, 58, an office manager whose husband is disabled. "I can't tell you how frustrating this is."

As electricity yesterday trickled back to homes and businesses throughout the region, officials defended the pace of power restoration, saying they are working as fast as they can. Field crews yesterday restored service to nearly 100,000 utility customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. However, five days after the massive storm shrouded much of New England in ice, about 220,000 homes and businesses remained without power.

In Massachusetts, as of last evening, 61,000 customers remained without electricity. The most outages - more than 34,000 - remained in Worcester County, according to National Grid. Statewide outages peaked at 326,000 on Friday and affected nearly 1 million homes and businesses across New England.

Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said state officials and utility companies will study what they could have done better after they finish restoring power. He said 1,400 people yesterday remained at 59 shelters in the state.

"This was an incredibly unique event," he said. "There are a lot of things to evaluate. We're not even halfway through this."

David Graves, a spokesman for National Grid, blamed the sluggish return of power on "unprecedented" devastation to the company's system of transmission towers, utility poles, and hundreds of miles of cable, much of it in remote areas inundated with downed trees.

"Our employees say this is the most destructive storm they've seen in their careers," Graves said.

Graves insisted the company - which still had 50,000 people without power last evening - did everything it could to prepare for the storm. With more than 1,000 work crews - many of them from around the country and Canada - they have enough help, he said..

The company had replaced many of its power lines, but he said newer lines would not have done better against falling trees. He also said the company has studied whether to put more lines underground. In most cases it's not worth the cost, he said, and it makes it harder to identify and fix problems.

"We understand the frustration people feel," Graves said. "We were prepared, but the system was severely and critically damaged."

In New Hampshire, where at least two people died as a result of the storm, 115,000 utility customers remained without service. On Friday, a 49-year-old Danville man died when his mobile home filled with carbon monoxide from a generator, and on Sunday, a 60-year-old Epping man died when the power to his oxygen supply failed. Scores of others throughout the region have been sickened by exhaust from gas-powered generators and heaters.

"It is a laborious process," said Jim Van Dongen, a spokesman for New Hampshire's department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. "In a lot of places there is so much damage to the electrical system that they actually have to rebuild it."

In Maine, an estimated 40,000 remained without power, according to Mark Belserene, director of operations for Maine's Emergency Management Agency. "It may be a couple of more days before everyone is back on," Belserene said.

Some school districts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts remained closed yesterday. Several districts said they would stay closed until the end of the week, while Barre, Lunenburg, and Townsend schools said they would not resume classes until Jan. 5.

Heidi Guarino, chief of staff for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said schools in Massachusetts are required to hold classes for a minimum of 180 days. "It's too early to talk about waivers. The commissioner feels very strongly that time in school is sacrosanct," Guarino said.

The storm also has stressed hotels, prompting some complaints about room rates.

During the weekend at the Homewood Suites by Hilton in Billerica, managers said they had to raise prices from $99 to $119, after initially lowering them for customers who lost power during the storm. With every room booked, and extended families squeezing into single rooms, there wasn't enough food for breakfast or dinner, and the cleaning staff was overwhelmed.

"We started really low, but when we realized there was such a huge demand, we had to increase the rates to slow the demand," said Dina Coventry, the hotel's director of sales, who added that the hotel has kept its higher weekday rates $50 lower than usual.

After losing power early Friday at their four-bedroom home in Chelmsford, Joseph M. Kunze, his wife, and three young children spent their first night without electricity in a hotel. "That was very difficult with all the kids," said Kunze, 43, who runs a technology company.

Like many others in the region, Kunze and his family moved back into their cold, dark home. To get by, they get around with glow sticks, heat water on their gas-powered stove, and sleep together beneath lots of blankets and beside a gas fireplace in their living room.

"I've never experienced anything like this," Kunze said. "It shouldn't take this long. It makes me angry."

Brian Ballou and Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Casey Ramsdell contributed to this story. David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.