By Guy Page

For many Vermonters, Tuesday’s nor’easter is long-forgotten. But it’s still a reality for the more than 5,000 Green Mountain Power customers now in their fourth day without power after Tuesday morning’s nor-easter dumped heavy snow on power lines.

According to PowerOutage.us, more than 10% of Windham County was still without power as of 8:30 AM Friday morning. Parts of southern Windsor County also are without power. The total number of GMP power outages is 5,672. The next closest utility is Washington Electric with just seven outages.

VDC was notified of the outage – now in day four – by a relative who lives in Townshend, a rural town in northern Windham County. “We are blessed with neighbors with a generator!,” she said. 

Green Mountain Power tripled its emergency response workforce due to the storm, drawing on both internal and external manpower. It said it expects outages to be down to ‘singles’ by Saturday. On its Facebook page, the state’s largest utility also described its four-step plan to restoring power in the wake of nor’easter outages:

When a major storm strikes our beautiful state, our priority immediately is to clear hazards, such as downed power lines, downed trees and equipment blocking the roads. Sometimes this can take several days depending on the extent of the storm’s impacts to Vermont, including trees and roads. This assures emergency vehicles can reach customers if needed.

– Transmission and substation facilities are then repaired first since they supply power to the lines serving communities, neighborhoods and individual customers. 

– We move quickly and safely to hospitals and other critical medical facilities, communications facilities and emergency response agencies. 

– Crews then work to restore power as quickly as possible to the rest of our customers, typically addressing outages that restore the largest number of customers before moving to more isolated events.