Gov. Ned Lamont Monday blasted Eversource’s decision to announce -- before Henri arrived -- that it could take up to three weeks to get the power back on after the storm.
“I think it was a little dumb and pretty tone-deaf. Technically speaking with a Category 3 storm, they had extra time to get it repaired. But we were never going to allow that to happen,” Lamont said.
Lamont said the utility companies are performing, and the storm wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
A Category 3 storm refers to a state storm damage ranking. Utilities are given more time to restore power after more damaging storms.
But Eversource spokesman Mitch Gross said that when the company made its pre-storm announcement, it relied on information from its prediction services, including an outage modeling team at UConn.
“We make those announcements based on the best available weather information at the time,” Gross said. “And at the time, Henri had changed to a hurricane and was headed straight toward us.”
Both Lamont and Gross spoke on Connecticut Public Radio’s Where We Live.
