Many Frustrated Acton NSTAR Customers Still Without Power

As of 9 a.m., 684 Acton NSTAR customers have been without power since early Sunday. Up and down the east coast, Irene flooded streets, destroyed homes, idled businesses and claimed lives. Here in Acton, trees took down utility poles, causing many frustrated residents to live without power.

One frustrated Acton customer is Donya Platt, who is one of a handful of families on Ethan Allen Drive in Acton, that has been without power since Sunday morning.

“My daughter just started high school today and she had to take a shower at a friends house in the neighborhood down the road,” said Platt. “It is getting expensive. We’ve had to eat out a bunch. We are a family with three kids, two with autism and this has been such a nightmare.”

According to Caroline Allen, a spokesperson for NSTAR, by 10 p.m. Friday, all Acton customers should be restored with power.

“The damage is just so extensive in so many places that we essentially have to rebuild the electric system before we can even restore power to our customers,” said Allen. “We focus on making the repairs that will benefit the largest number of customers. So if there is a wire down and we can put it back up and it’s going to give power back to 5,000 customers, we are going to put that one up before we are going to energize one or five customers.”

According to Allen, Unitil, an electric company that serves towns in and outside the Fitchburg area, has came to assist NSTAR.

“We were prepared for this storm,” said Allen. “We have canceled all vacations for all 3,000 of our employees. The challenge for us is just dealing with millions of power outages from Washington D.C. up to Maine and so we have got a lot of extra crews working a rotating 24/7 shift.”

Acton Town Manager, Steven Ledoux, was unavailable to speak with Patch yesterday because he was in an out of meetings. Patch will reach out to Acton Town Officials as soon as possible.