Local

Harvard, among several Mass. towns, finally has their power back on after 24 hours in dark

HARVARD, Mass. — Most people in Harvard finally have their power back on after a rough 24 hours in the dark.

The town was hit hard by outages after Monday’s snowstorm, and now many are hoping the power stays on through Wednesday’s storm.

The town opened a warming center at the Bromfield School Tuesday evening where people could come and charge their phones and get water.

The center could open back up if needed with the next storm.

“We have a lot of trees here, we’re a rural community and we’re always concerned when we get a lot of snow, hopefully, it won’t be as bad as this go-round where we had a lot of rain beforehand, so it built up ice on the trees and weighted them down,” said Erin McBee, vice chair of the Harvard Select Board. “Hopefully all the ones that were gonna fall have fallen and we won’t have any more lines down.”

Even essential departments like fire and police were forced to rely on generators overnight after more than half the town lost power.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s very regional, localized this isn’t a statewide thing, so why this has become such a challenge has become very baffling to me,” said Fire Chief Rick Sicard.

Chief Sicard says it was frustrating not getting updates from National Grid on how long the outages would last.

In the meantime, he says people need to be careful while using generators and have an electrician hook them up.

“Because if it’s not done properly, those generators can back feed into the power grid, so the power companies will be working on the lines and they think the power is dead and now all of a sudden the generator back feeds and that can be very dangerous to National Grid workers,” said Chief Sicard.

This a good safety reminder as this community gears up for a few more inches of snow Wednesday.

“So that is another element of surprise we are waiting for and hopefully they can fix a lot of things today and it doesn’t all happen again tomorrow, but we’re bracing for it,” said Arielle Jennings, who lives in Harvard.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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