Trees and tree limbs downed by howling winds caused scattered power outages across the county throughout the day Monday, scattering firefighters, police and utility crews to isolated locations from Colrain to Conway and South Deerfield to Shelburne.
At 5 p.m. the winds had clipped power from 8 percent of Franklin County’s electric customers.
It was a microcosm of a problem that afflicted roughly 64,000 people across the state, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency’s map of outages. The map indicated 2,927 of Franklin County’s 38,436 customers had lost power by Monday afternoon.
Fire departments in the state’s most rural county were flooded with calls, as massive winds brought down tree limbs and whole trees onto power lines. According to MEMA’s map, 383 National Grid customers in New Salem were without power as of 4:30 p.m. This equals 74 percent of customers in that tiny town.
Joe Cuneo, chief of the New Salem and Wendell fire departments, said New Salem had by 4:40 p.m. received seven calls of downed wires and Wendell had gotten four. He said Wendell Road had been closed earlier in the day, making school pick-up more difficult, though he said buses were routed around the closure.
“The whole county’s having problems,” he said, adding that there were no injuries that he was aware of. He said he heard from National Grid that power was expected to be restored by 8 or 9 p.m. Monday. According to National Grid, 1,083 of its 8,752 customers were without power Monday afternoon.
Cuneo said his departments were handling the situation professionally.
“We’ve done this before,” he said.
Greenfield Fire Chief Robert Strahan said his department was inundated with calls Monday.
Paul Raskevitz, deputy chief of the Greenfield Department of Public Works and the city’s tree warden, said his department calls energy company Eversource whenever a fallen tree downs a power line. He said the department is not equipped for such work, which can be dangerous. Raskevitz said a fallen tree that temporarily blocked Barton Road without affecting electric lines was removed. He said the forestry division – made up of three employees, a bucket truck, a log truck and a wood chipper – was on call Monday night.
“Greenfield’s in pretty good shape,” he said. “I think we have a pretty good maintenance program for the trees. … We try to stay ahead of the curve.”
Raskevitz also said the heavy winds had wreaked havoc along Wells Street by blowing around recyclables people had placed in bins for pick-up Monday.
Mike Kolakoski, a lieutenant with the South Deerfield Fire Department, said there was a call of a downed power line at roughly 3:30 p.m. on River Road. He was unaware if it had caused a fire.
Gill Fire Chief Gene Beaubien said there had been two calls of downed lines by 5 p.m. The first closed Grove Street for less than 10 minutes and the second affected Gill’s River Road.
There were reports of a school bus getting blocked in by wind damage on North Poland Road.
The National Weather Service reported wind gusts over 60 miles per hour Monday.
Power issues caused some schools to dismiss early and briefly stopped Amtrak train traffic between Mystic and New Haven, Conn.
Reach DomenicPoli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.