Power restoration begins in CT

(WTNH) -- The question a whole lot of people have now that Sandy has passed through the state is when will the power come back on?

Utility crews were on the roads all day working to restore power for the thousands without it Tuesday.

As soon as the winds died Tuesday morning it was buckets up. From CL&P to UI to the municipal electric companies, the saws were buzzing, some were even working during the storm.

"Within 15 minutes they were out there with a police car, a lines crew came out, chopped up the tree, fixed the lines and within three hours they had the power back on in the height of the storm," said Julie Robison, of Wallingford.

CL&P has restored power to about 200,000 customers since the height of the outages. In Branford alone, they had more than a dozen trucks clearing trees, rehanging lines, even so they emphasize that it will be a long tough road for many and to expect the power to stay out for days.

"How are you prepared," asked News 8's Bob Wilson.

"Food in the fridge, non-perishable food, we are ready and prepared," said Cindy Berten, of Branford.

This is one of the biggest changes CL&P made, towns and emergency personnel were complaining that they couldn't cut the trees off the power lines to open the roads because they didn't know if the lines were energized. Well now CL&P has linemen out with the towns crews letting them know it is safe to cut."

"This time last year we had 300 additional ready-to-go, now we have more than 1,000 line workers ready to go and many of them are at work across our system," said Mitch Gross, CL&P.

CL&P had requested 2,000 line workers from as far away as Texas and the Midwest, but because they were competing with New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey they were only able to get half that many. However, one change they say that should help is that CL&P had contracted with more than 500 electrical contractors to rehang services lines to individual homes so line crew can work on bigger problems. Will all of the changes mean the power is back on sooner? Only time will tell.

"We have a lot of candles, we have flashlights," one man said. "I went out and bought a lot of batteries so we are there."