In a 6 p.m. conference call between representatives from National Grid and several municipalities, National Grid announced that the main lines in mostly all of the Capital District have been repaired and that many of the schools that were still suffering from a loss of power at the beginning of the week should see power by Tuesday.
In Schenectady County, the representatives said all of the main lines are back on, while they will continue to work on the small pockets of the county that are without power. While they said Clifton Park has a lot more cleanup needed, most of the power substations will be back to normal tonight (Monday, Dec. 15), they said.
In the City of Albany, there are still small pockets and services that need to be repaired while officials said that all power should be back on in the main lines and most subpockets in Bethlehem, including all schools that were without power.
All of the major power stations in Colonie, which are located on Wolf Road, Karner Road, Everett Road, Forts Ferry and Newtonville, are back on while there are many small pockets that are still in the process of being fixed. These pockets without power are still in the repair process in Latham and Menands as well.
Village of Colonie Mayor Frank Leak, who listened in on the call, explained that the smaller pockets are harder to reach as many of the lines are located in residents’ back yards, making it harder for National Grid to bring their repair trucks through to repair the lines.
So they have to get in there by hand, he said.
In the same call, National Grid reps gave a few statistics that represent what they are calling this `winter storm event.` As one representative explained, at the peak of the event, there were 229,000 customers without service; 772,000 feeds of ordinary and secondary wire needed to be replaced; 3,000 individual services are being done; there are 350 broken poles; 150 damaged transformers; it took 68 tractor-trailers to take away damaged materials; 11,000 hotel rooms hold the crew members who were called in from Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states to work on the repairs resulting in the use of over 24,000 gallons of diesel; and National Grid has receieved over 88,000 phone calls from customers.
For more on this story, check back at www.spotlightnews.com, or read the Wednesday, Dec. 17 print edition of the Spotlight.“