MANCHESTER — The lights are back on.
National Grid said the problem which caused about 320 customers to be without electric power for 30-plus hours in some cases was a result of two separate cable failures starting Saturday night and extending into yesterday afternoon.
Multiple outages happened at different times throughout the weekend for various amounts of times. These are on top of three outages that happened during the week. All outages have been restored.
A National Grid representative, Doug Wagner, attended part of the selectmen's meeting on Monday night to answer questions about the outages. The discussion between Wagner and the selectmen revolved mostly around the lack of communication between the company and town — and the length of the outages.
Selectmen acknowledged the hard work of National Grid working around the clock over the weekend into yesterday to restore the power but also showed some frustration about the outages.
"What is happening?" Selectman Lee Spence asked Wagner, citing the multiple outages that have been happening around town during the past week.
"The problem is the longevity (of the outages)," said Selectman Mary Hardwick. "Thank God it isn't winter or snowing out."
Selectmen Chairman Susan Thorne said she and her colleagues understand that National Grid is trying to update an aging power system. She said selectmen were frustrated with the number of calls the town received about the outages and how little information the town could share with its residents.
More information would have allowed residents to make better plans during these extended power outages, she said.
"Along with providing service, they have an added responsibility to communicate with the town and its customers," Thorne said in an interview yesterday. "They (need to do a better job) of letting people know what is going on."
The first cable failure happened in the Summer Street area. While workers were trying to fix the problem at that location, another separate cable failure happened on Beach Street, said David Gendall, a regional director at National Grid.
He said these were two isolated incidents and both required specialized work to be done underground.
"One of the problems with working with an underground system is being able to find the problem and isolating it," said Gendall. He said it takes a lot of work to restore the power under these conditions, which includes cutting the old wire out, putting a new cable in and splicing it.
The heavy rain on Saturday night delayed the process of restoring the power, said Gendall, because all the water had to be pumped out of the manholes before workers could locate and fix the cable. He said crews had been working nonstop until the problem was completely fixed yesterday.
"We had to work under tough conditions and it is dangerous work," said Gendall. "We regret any inconvenience for our customers in Manchester and we work hard to prevent these occurrences."
In the early 1980s, National Grid bought Manchester Electric, a private company, which powered the whole town through one substation on Summer Street. And for the past few years, National Grid has been working to update the aging power infrastructure in Manchester, Gendall said. It is addressing the problem by bringing in new lines from surrounding towns to take the load off of the substation.
Jonathan Phelps may be contacted at 978-283-7000 x3447 or gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com.
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