CONCORD, N.H. — Falling temperatures were expected to send more people to shelters in the ice-coated Northeast on Saturday as an army of utility crews made only limited progress restoring power to more than 1 million homes and businesses.
“If you don’t have power, assume that you will not get it restored today, and right now make arrangements to stay someplace warm tonight,” warned Gov. John Lynch of hardest-hit New Hampshire.
Utilities in his state said it probably will be Thursday or Friday — a week after the storm — before all power is restored, partly because of the sheer number of outages and partly because of the devastation.
“What is facing us is the apparent need to rebuild the entire infrastructure of some sections of the electrical delivery system,” said Martin Murray, spokesman for Public Service Company of New Hampshire.
Crews across the region saw electric poles, wires and equipment destroyed. The extent of damage was unclear because some roads were impassable.
“We’d put one line up, and it seemed like another would break,” said Stan Tucker, operations supervisor in Springfield for Central Vermont Public Service Corp. “It seems like every line has multiple problems.”
About 1.3 million homes and businesses from Pennsylvania to Maine were plunged into the dark — and cold — by a storm that coated trees and wires with ice Thursday night into Friday. Most of the outages were in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and New York. About 880,000 remained without power Saturday afternoon.
Four states declared either limited or full states of emergency.
Officials expected to see more people in shelters Saturday night, as temperatures were forecasted to dip into the teens. It was the third night without power for many.
“The first night, your house doesn’t get so cold, but the second night — it was 20 degrees last night, so who knows,” said Sue Rogers, a nurse volunteer for the Great Bay chapter of the Red Cross in New Hampshire.
