A Statement by Tony Marone, UI President and CEO

“Be assured that UI crews, contractors and partners are working diligently day and night to restore service as safely and quickly as possible. This work will take time and continue until every customer is restored.
We ask for your patience during this process.”

ORANGE, Conn. — August 5, 2020 (10:30 p.m. EDT) — Tony Marone, President and CEO of United Illuminating, issued the following statement:

Tropical Storm Isaias caused significant damage across our electric system and impacted all 17 towns and cities we serve, with more than 1,700 outage-causing events and more than 1,000 downed wires.

At its peak we had 123,000 customers without power. We currently have fewer than 90,000 customers without power, so progress is being made. Be assured that UI crews, contractors and partners are working diligently day and night to restore service as safely and quickly as possible. This work will take time and continue until every customer is restored. We ask for your patience during this process.

The company’s initial focus today was on clearing blocked roads, assessing damage, and working with local municipalities to make roads safe and restore service to identified critical facilities. Under a well-communicated process, the company provides each municipality with a liaison to ensure a direct channel for communications, so all critical needs are met.

As this phase of work begins to wrap up, crews are now turning their attention to addressing outages affecting large numbers of customers. All of our teams are working under special precautions because of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include a one-employee-per-vehicle policy, use of personal protective equipment and enhanced hygiene measures.

Finally, UI’s planning and preparation for Tropical Storm Isaias began last week, long before it posed a clear threat to our area. At that time, the company reached out to its mutual assistance group (NAMAG) to request additional restoration resources, worked to secure additional contractors, and began outreach to municipal partners. All this planning is consistent with the Emergency Response Plan, on file with the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, for a storm of this magnitude.

The storm we prepared for is the storm we got.

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