WARWICK, R.I. — Cold showers. Meals in the dark. Refrigerators full of spoiled food. No TV. No Internet. Up and down the East Coast, patience is wearing thin among the millions of people still waiting for the electricity to come back on after Hurricane Irene knocked out the power last weekend.
“It’s like ‘Little House on the Prairie’ times,” said Debbie McWeeney, who went to a Red Cross shelter in Warwick to pick up food and water after everything in her refrigerator went bad. “Except I’m not enjoying it at all.”
With the waters receding across much of the flood-stricken region, homeowners are mucking out their basements and dragging soggy furniture to the curb. But the wait for power drags on, with an estimated 1.38 million homes and businesses still without electricity, down from a peak of 9.6 million.
And criticism of the utility companies is mounting. In Rhode Island, a state senator is calling for an investigation, and Massachusetts’ attorney general is demanding information from utilities on how they are dealing with the crisis, including how many crews are in the field and their response time.
The industry has defended its efforts, noting it warned the public that a storm like Irene was bound to cause prolonged outages and pointing out that flooding and toppled trees caused severe damage to utility poles, substations and other equipment.
Tim Horan, National Grid president for Rhode Island, said crews from as far as Kansas and Idaho are working 16-hour shifts, and “we’re committed to getting this resolved as soon as possible.”
Irene has been blamed for at least 46 deaths in 13 states. With the streets drying out in New Jersey, some towns faced new problems, namely trash bins overflowing with waterlogged debris. In Vermont, with roads slowly reopening, the National Guard’s airlift of food, water and other supplies to once cut-off towns was winding down. But Vermont faced new danger Thursday evening: A flash-flood warning was issued for the Rutland area after 2 to 5 inches of rain fell.
Meanwhile, forecasters were keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Katia. Katia has weakened to a tropical storm as it moves across the Atlantic, but it is expected to strengthen again over the next two days.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it’s too early to tell whether Katia will hit the U.S.
