National Grid Says Seekonk and Attleboro Have Been a Challenge

As of 2 p.m. Friday, 107 hours into National Grid's restoration plan, there were 330 Attleboro customers left without power, down from the nearly 14,000 who went without power for days after Tropical Storm Irene. 

Attleboro, Brockton, Rehoboth and parts of Seekonk were some of the most challenging communities in which to restore power, according to National Grid Chief Operating Officer Ellen Smith, who added that there were 14,604 out of power in the Bay State as of 2 p.m. Friday. By the end of the day that number will be down below 5,000, she said. 

"Over the course of the week, we had our biggest challenges in Attleboro, Brockton and Rehoboth," she said. "Our biggest outage now is just over 1,000 people."

That outage is in Seekonk. "We had at one point 10 then 19 crews working hard to restore power," said National Grid Massachusetts President Marcy Reed.

The problem, however, Reed said, was that crews were not visible because they were deep in the woods. "We had a perception issue in Seekonk, which I take responsibility for," she said. 

Why were those communities a challenge? According to Smith, there were more than 1,200 sections of wire pulled to the ground. And more than half of those sections were in Attleboro, Rehoboth, Seekonk and Brockton. 

"A large part of those were in right-of-ways not along the roadway, and we had walk in and not use bucket trucks and it required us to climb," Smith said.

Those areas, which are often heavily treed and quite narrow, were hit with the back side of the storm, which brought high winds.

National Grid is asking anyone who is still without power and using generators to power their homes to be sure to turn off the main breakers in their home for safety reasons.