6:30 AM
At first light Jim Baskind and his crew left their staging area and began to make their way to their first assigned area. The roads were a mess and the public works crews were clearly overwhelmed. They zigzagged their way through downed limbs, finally arriving at the correct address. "I knew as soon as we went out on Saturday that we didn't have the resources to handle this on our own. We were completely overwhelmed from the word go. It would have taken us weeks to restore power with the resources we had." Fortunately PSNH and Unitil were already bringing in crews from other states to handle the recovery. "Some lines and fuse boxes had more than two inches of ice covering them."
12:00 PM
Bill Raleigh hung up the phone. He had just been on a conference call with local leader, state emergency officials, and the Governor. "The Governor stressed to all of us the importance of making sure the public could access our shelters. He assured us that state and federal help was on the way. We found out Pease Air Base was going to be the staging area for FEMA supplies and that they would be arriving within the next twenty-four hours. Another city manager asked how they were deciding where to restore power to and one of the state officials said they were currently attempting to prioritize. A few months after the storm I was speaking with a friend who works for the Department of Safety and he told me they had no plan in place before the storm on where and how to restore power. At the time I remember being nervous because our shelter only had enough generator capacity to last until Monday morning, and Greenham Hospital only had the capacity to last unitl Tuesday. From what the Governor and others were telling us at the time it seemed like we would not have power by then."
"I started getting nervous late Saturday after Bill Raleigh came to the shelter and told me he did not have an answer for when power might be restored or when more generator fuel would be arriving," told Ann Richards.
4:00 PM
"Even though we were helping with the cleanup effort calls were still coming into 911," explained Dennis Daugherty. "I responded to more than one call regarding carbon monoxide poisoning from personal generators." In fact, carbon monoxide poisoning was one of the largest health issues associated with the storm.
9:00 PM
Throughout the day the utility workers, municipal employees, and citizens trickled in and out of the shelter. Some just needed a warm shower and brief relief from the cold and others were about to spend their second night away from home. "Some people were becoming irritated with the situation, but as a whole I woudl say spirits were still pretty high among the people in the shelter. There was a real sense of community, kind of a 'We're in this together' mentality," said Ann Richards. "Most of the guys on my crew had been working for eighteen hours by the time we made it to the shelter. We were all pretty spent from clearing debris and being out in the freezing cold, but the people of the town were great. They would bring us out coffee or something they baked if they had gas stoves and ask us how we were doing and how things were coming," explained Jim Baskind. Stories like Baskind's were reported all over the state by utility crews and municipal employees (Union Leader).
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
12:00 PM
Dennis Daugherty: "It was great to get some extra help. We are not a particularly large department so by Sunday we were getting stretched pretty thin. Most of the officers had been on duty for a majority of the time since the storm hit so it was hard to check on our families."
3:30 PM
"Some National Guard members arrived at the shelter with backup generator fuel, extra cots, extra blankets, and more MRE's. We weren't at capacity and we still had some supplies but knowing we would not run out of any essential supplies was a huge relief," expressed Ann Richards."We were having a very hard time getting power restored. There were critical hubs that were almost completely destroyed in fires or explosions and we were replacing major sections of wire. In most storms we make simple fixes to fuse boxes and maybe a few downed wires, but this was on a scale which even the older guys hadn't seen before," described Jim Baskind.
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Across New Hampshire 160,000 customers were still without power. Weather reports were calling for three to five inches of snow for Tuesday with temperatures never rising above freezing. Emergency response workers went door to door to inform citizens about the situation and assist anyone evacuate if they wished to do so.
"Monday is when we started to run into some real problems," explained Bill Raleigh. "I was receiving calls from my employees -police, fire, public works- that they could not fuel their vehicals because local gas stations could not pump gas. I was told by the state that they were addressing the situation, and in the meantime I should send my people to Department of Transportation outposts for fuel. Most of the town was still without power and most people with generators had run out of fueling capacity. My police station was downn, two of my three fire stations were down, and I wasn't even sure how long I could keep the EOC running. Everyone was running on very little rest. We were stretched thin."
"We had to make some tough decisions on Monday," said Ann Richards, "because we did not have the staffing capabilities to keep operating as a 24 hour shelter. We decided that Monday night would be our last full night and on Tuesday we would become a warming shelter open during the day."Fortunately, power had been restored to Greenham hospital. But most of the town was still in the dark as night fell on Monday evening.
