SOMERS — At the peak of Thursday’s coastal storm, more than 60% of customers in Somers had no power, there were more than 30 damage locations and more than 40 roads closed.
Bruce Urbon, a Somers resident and DPW worker said, “It was just a crazy night.” Somers First Selectman Bud Knorr said, “I can tell you wind gusts were up to 50MPH.”
More than half the town was in the dark, Thursday. “Wow, that’s a lot of people,” Jeanne Smith.
Fox61 found trees on power lines and trees on homes. A large tree hit a home on Pinney Road at 2AM. Luckily, no one was hurt. No one was home at the time. But homeowner Paul Bujnowski spent Thursday on the phone with his insurance company who told him, he’s out of luck. “Because I was renovating the exterior there was no siding on the house. The insurance dropped my policy so right now I’m on the hook on my own.”
Billings Road and Springfield Road were two of about 40 impassable roads. Crews worked overtime and the town was responding to incidents as quickly as possible. “From our standpoint, the town of Somers and our DPW Director can only address those road closures and removing trees where there are no active power lines,” said Knorr.
On Haul Hill Road, Eversource and tree crews were getting branches off live wires. “We had a lot of high winds and trees went down everywhere and power lines,” said Urbon.
He was prepared for the power loss. “I have a generator that I installed a few years back when we had storm Alfred I believe it was. We were out of power for about 7 days.”
But Jeanne Smith doesn’t have a generator, so she is spending Thursday at the fire house. “We lost power. So without power my oxygen ran out and that’s why I’m here. The town was gracious enough to bring me here.”
The damage in Somers is widespread, but concentrated in the Northern part of town.
Schools were closed Thursday. No word yet on if they’ll be open Friday.
