Wilton Publishes Hurricane Isaias Afternoon Update For August 10

Press release from the Town of Wilton:

August 10, 2020

Minimal restoration progress was made overnight. Again we are working with Jonathan Harris from the Governor’s Office to get more crews into Wilton. Right now, there are less crews than on Saturday.

• Town wide, 342 residents had their power restored since last night’s update. 2,449 or 32% still remain without power.
• Neighboring communities have seen little in terms of crews and restoration.
• It is appalling that six days in, we are still asking: What is the plan? Where are the crews?
• Wilton town employees are working around the clock. We are doing everything we can.
• We still don’t have a comprehensive list of outages, but I will be working throughout the afternoon and evening to respond to your emails based on the information I have received. If you tag me on Facebook with a question, I am not likely to see it. Please email me.
• Next areas for blockage removal are Overidge, Wakefield, Thunder Lake and Signal Hill.
• Both DPW and Eversource will return later to deal with debris and old wires and poles.
• Eversource messaging continues to be of little to no value.
• Optimum and Frontier are both seen working in town.
• We are in process of standing up a COVID responsible cooling center at one of the schools, hopefully with access later today.

Reminders:

Water: Potable water at Fire Headquarters from the non-Town Hall side of the building. Water is available 24/7.

Evening Internet/Charging Center at Comstock. See below.

Outdoor WiFi outside all school buildings, the back of Town Hall, Comstock and the Library.

If you wish to contact me, please email at lynne.vanderslice@wiltonct.org.

This is a horrible situation. It is difficult to be patient, so thank you for your patience."

Lynne Vanderslice

First Selectwoman

Comstock WiFi Access and Charging Stations:

• Weeknights open from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Sign-up via e-Trak or by calling (weekdays) or visiting Comstock if you can’t access e-Trak.
• Walk-ins are allowed, if space is available.
• You must wear a mask and complete a contact form.
• Bring your devise and extension cords.
• Socially distant tables and chairs provided.
• Staff will be onsite
• No bathrooms.

Message from Altice:

In Connecticut (as of 8 am 8/8), 23% of our customers are currently offline, with the vast majority of the service-related issues being caused by loss of commercial power. To the extent that there are impacts on our plant due to the storm, we need to ensure the situations are safe (no live electrical wires) prior to proceeding with repairs.

Our central network has back up power and generators to ensure that we can provide service as soon as commercial power is restored to individual customer homes and our more local network. In instances where power is restored but service is still impacted, it is likely that our network was damaged such as at the individual home level or the node/neighborhood level. We are working as fast as we can to identify root causes of any service outages and restore services if an outage not related to loss of commercial power.

We encourage our customers to contact us via social media (Twitter and Facebook) to advise of any individual service issues as we are actively monitoring those channels. In addition, to alleviate long hold times to reach care agents via phone, customers can use the message function on Optimum.net. to chat with a live agent and identify service issues.

Given the extent of the storm’s impact on service across the region, we have opened the Optimum WiFi network to customers and non-customers during this emergency situation and nearly 93% of our WiFi hotspots are online.

Here is the hotspot link: https://www.optimum.com/outage

This press release was produced by the Town of Wilton.The views expressed here are the author’s own.