Cleanup continues for Mass. residents after Monday’s storm brought trees, power lines down

Following Monday’s storm across Massachusetts, crews were busy clearing huge trees and branches that came down while power companies reconnected lines on Tuesday.

Marquis Tree Service had countless calls for help with downed trees and branches. They worked in Lexington taking apart a tree that was hanging precariously over a home after breaking in Monday's storm.

The owner of that home shared photos of some of the damage they were called on and still trying to get to.

John Marquis said that those damaging winds came from a southerly direction.

"Trees are used to getting hit by wind in the same direction,” he said. “And they buffer themselves, [and] create a root system that will protect them from that. And if it gets switched up, you can certainly have more damage than usual."

Many trees also took out power. One woman in Bridgewater who stocked up for the pandemic told Boston 25 News that her food supply could be severely impacted.

"If the lights don't come on soon I will lose everything in my fridge and freezer chest," she said.

Eversource and National Grid both told Boston 25 News in a pair of statements that they are working around the clock and using extra protocols to keep their employees safe during the health crisis.

PREVIOUS: WEATHER ALERT: Downpours, damaging winds Monday

“Our field crews are continuing to work around the clock resorting power to those customers still without it and making repairs to the damage caused by yesterday’s storm,” Eversource said when reached for comment. “We have already restored power to 118,000 thousand customers, and the majority of those customers without power should have their service restored by tonight, with the remaining few customers by tomorrow.”

Eversource added that they have a town-by-town list on their website that has specific restoration times.

“National Grid has over 1,300 personnel in New England who have been activated as part of our emergency response operations,” National Grid told Boston 25 News. “This includes approximately: 935 in Mass. and 420 in R.I., inclusive of overhead line crews, forestry, contractors, underground and substation workers. These numbers will increase, as we have also requested additional crews through our mutual assistance partnerships.”

The company also told Boston 25 that customers can find the latest restoration time estimates on the outage central page of their website.

“Our outage central page shows the estimated time of restoration for entire communities and reflects the estimated time for the last customer in that community to have power restored,” National Grid said in a statement.

“As of 7 a.m. we had restored more than 109,000 customers in Mass. As of noon, we had total outages of 21,476, down from 60,000 at midnight. Monday, National Grid’s objectives included responding to 911 calls and wires down calls, restoring critical facilities such as hospitals and first responder facilities, as well as performing damage assessment to get a detailed understanding of the scope, scale and nature of the damage to the network. This enables the restoration to proceed safely and efficiently and helps us restore power to customers more quickly.”

© 2020 Cox Media Group