Power outages may not be restored for days in Massachusetts

Local News

More than 100,000 customers were still without power in Massachusetts as of Tuesday morning, with some restoration times posted as late as Thursday night.

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Thousands of residents in New England could be in the dark for multiple days after a deadly storm Monday brought heavy rain, flooding, and strong winds to the region. 

The storm also caused extensive damage — there were many reports of trees and debris blocking roads and toppled power lines — which according to an Eversource spokesperson is the reason this could be a “multi-day restoration process.”

Eversource, a utility that services much of New Hampshire and Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts like Greater Boston and the Cape, would not say specifically the duration of power outages and which areas will be impacted the most by long wait times for power restoration. Its online outage map only gave estimated restoration times for some pockets of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with the latest time listed as 11 p.m. Wednesday for southeast Massachusetts. 

A spokesperson said that they must assess the damage first, which is currently delayed by blocked roads. The utility is first focusing on areas with large swaths of outages.

Since the storm, a press release from Eversource said they had restored power to more than 177,000 customers in Massachusetts. According to their outage map as of 9 a.m. Tuesday, around 44,000 customers in Massachusetts were still without power, and more than 3,600 customers in New Hampshire were in the dark. There were more than 26,000 power outage reports out of Connecticut.

Towns in southeast Massachusetts like Duxbury and Millis saw thousands still impacted by power outages as of Tuesday morning. 

National Grid, another Massachusetts utility, posted restoration times on its online outage map as late as 11 p.m. Thursday, which also largely impacted towns in the southeastern part of the commonwealth. But given the extent of the damage and ongoing assessments, a National Grid spokesperson said these are “global estimated times of restoration” and that these times could fluctuate. 

The utility was reporting more than 73,000 outages as of 9 a.m. Tuesday. Towns with thousands impacted included Scituate, Hanover, and Pembroke. The spokesperson said the utility had restored power for more than 205,000 customers since the storm moved through New England. 

National Grid had nearly 2,000 workers on the ground responding to the storm, according to a post on X.

The total number of power outages in New England was nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday morning, with impacts mostly in Maine, followed by Massachusetts. 

For customers who want individual updates on power restoration, utilities like National Grid and Eversource offer text message notifications for residents who opt in to the service. Customers can also keep track of outages and some information on restoration times using utility outage maps online.