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| Line workers restring power lines on Blanchard Road. The crew from C.C. Power drove from Michigan and worked as subcontractors to National Grid. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
During the week that followed the freak Halloween nor'easter that left Harvard without power for days, the worst moment for fire Chief Rick Sicard came the Sunday morning after the storm. That was when it dawned on him that the resources he and the town had gathered to clear roads and help disentangle power lines would have to be let go.
Sicard had mobilized all members of the fire, police, and highway departments the night of the storm, and had two additional tree clearing crews in town from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, all ready to get to work Sunday morning.
Forty-two roads in town were impassable because of downed trees, poles and wires. So in his first morning call with National Grid, he told the Press this week, "I asked, 'Can you guarantee me the power is cut?'"
"I said, 'I'm not so much concerned with the power itself,'" Sicard said. "I said, 'My primary concern is I need to get these roads open.'"
With so many roads impassable and as the one responsible for public safety, "that was a huge concern of mine," Sicard said.
Both substations that feed electricity to Harvard—one in Ayer and one at Pratt's Landing—were down and the town was 100 percent without power.
National Grid told him no, Sicard said; there was no way it was going to guarantee that.
It was the first of two surprises Sicard and his emergency response team faced in a week of blocked roads and no power that some say took longer than necessary to fix.
The storm tested not only the patience of home and business owners who were left without heat, light or water, but that of the town officials and volunteers who were left to deal with its consequences.
The Saturday evening event may have chased trick-or-treaters from Harvard's streets, but it conjured its own cast of wizards, superheroes, and goats. Both Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Sicard singled out Verizon and its linemen for praise, saying the company had been "fantastic." They had kudos for the tree and line crews sent by National Grid to help clear streets and restore power.
Other members of the town emergency response team—which included Bragan and Sicard as well as Police Chief Edward Denmark, highway director Rich Nota, and school Superintendent Joe Connelly—had praise for the dozens of town employees and volunteers who worked around the clock to respond to the crisis, whether on the streets of Harvard, or in the emergency shelter or helping answer phones at Town Hall or the command center at the police station.
There was no praise for National Grid, the company. What emerges from a week of interviews with selectmen and members of the emergency response team is a picture of a town ready and willing to pitch in to clear roads and help restore power, but frustrated by a company whose management seemed less interested in working with local leaders to solve problems, than in following procedures.
In public statements, National Grid executives have said the company did the best it could under difficult circumstances. But Harvard officials disagree.
"Let's just say," said Bragan this week, "that National Grid could have handled the job much better than it did."
Planning for the storm began the Wednesday before it arrived. Sicard, as fire chief, is the town's emergency director and he already had a plan, the one he had devised to deal with Hurricane Irene in August.
"When this storm came, I said, it's going to be the same exact thing as hurricane Irene," Sicard said. "We're not reinventing the wheel here. The same game plan. And we went with that."
"Sitting and waiting to be told what was happening was not an option," Bragan said. "That was one of the problems we had early on during the ice storm [of 2008]. During the ice storm, we were sitting back waiting for things to happen, as opposed to being part of the solution, being proactive in our approach."
When the storm arrived, Sicard asked the all-volunteer fire squad to report to the fire station at 9 p.m. The highway department was already busy plowing roads, and, as fallen trees were reported to the town dispatcher, fire and highway crews were sent to clear them. Selectmen met Sunday morning to declare an emergency and to authorize additional spending to clear roads and provide emergency services.
But by Sunday morning, Harvard's crews had cleared most debris that was not entangled in wires, and which might or might not be carrying electricity.
"We have a policy that if a wire is down, we treat it as live," Sicard said. "We don't take that risk."
Sicard said he offered to help National Grid get the roads clear every single day. During the ice storm of 2008, he said, the Ashburnham municipal utility, owned by that town, had shut off all power when the Ashburnham fire department made a similar request. Sicard was a member of that department.
"So I knew it was possible," he said. "When National Grid said they wouldn't do it, I knew they were not playing right. My guess is that they just felt it was their equipment and they didn't want anyone touching it and they were only going to use their guys to get trees off of their equipment…I said, 'We have crews, we can help you clear up these roads,' and they refused every single time. After day one, we were pretty much at the mercy of National Grid."
"Remember the volunteers who came out during the ice storm with chain saws and everything else," Bragan said. "We could have put that call out for people. And we would have gotten through this in better fashion once those [National Grid] line crews got into town."
Still, by Wednesday afternoon, the town was beginning to return to life. Tree and line crews sent by National Grid had begun to arrive and power had been restored to the commercial district and parts of town north of Route 2. But at this point, Sicard and his team got their second surprise.
As National Grid began to work its way from the main line on Ayer Road to secondary roads such as Poor Farm and Lancaster County Roads, the team learned that National Grid crews were phoning in reports of downed poles as they encountered them, one at a time. The calls went to National Grid, and then to Verizon, which rents use of its poles to the utility. Verizon then had to check with Dig Safe to make sure a replacement pole would not create problems for, say, underground gas or water lines. Then the company would dispatch a crew and a pole.
"A complete waste of time," Sicard told the Press.
When Sicard found out that Verizon wasn't working on the problem in the same room with National Grid, he and police Chief Denmark dispatched firefighters and police officers to drive through town and evaluate "every single street and every pole." In two hours, Sicard says, they had the whole town assessed, "and I had the list." There were 15 poles that needed to be replaced, though more were later discovered on roads, such as Partridge Hill Road, which at the time were inaccessible.
"We called Verizon and we said, 'Look, if we provided you with a list of the poles, can you take care of it?'" Bragan said. "And Peter Hyatt, the Verizon liaison for Harvard, said, 'Well, where did you get that?' And we said, 'We did it ourselves.' He said, 'National Grid didn't give it to you?' And we said, 'No. We had the police and fire go out and take a look at the roads and determine what poles needed to be done. We have streets, pole numbers, we have everything.' He said, 'Yeah, you get me that and I'll have every single one of those poles back up within 24 hours.' "
And he did.
But perhaps the most ironic moment, according to Sicard, came when National Grid, two days into the event, sent someone out to do an assessment of infrastructure and roads.
"The guy is sitting next to me," recalled Sicard, "and I have the map and it lists the roads that are blocked and how some are blocked 100 percent and then some can pass by car only."
"I have the whole list right there and I'm showing it to him. I said, 'The assessment is done. Here's the list.' And he's like, 'Oh, this is great! Can we fax this to headquarters?'"