<p>Day 6 - my 83 yr old Dad still has no power and no trucks running around town to give one hope. Feels like it’s never coming back. Even if the power comes on, we’ve had his house with wide open windows to try to remove the campfire smoke from wet wood being burned, whole place reeks. JCPL down to only 21K out in our county and they are declaring “75% customers have power restored” as if that was good.</p>
<p>Also w/o power since Saturday at 5pm in western CT. Our estimate is also for Sunday midnight, but we are prepared to go longer as there was extensive damage on our road and poles and transformers are still down. The feed to our house is underground but we are obviously still dependent on the distribution network at the street. Luckily I have been able to get to work the past 2 days since we have power and internet in Hartford.</p>
<p>Central CT here … 30% of the town is still without power. Schools were back in session yesterday (i.e., Wednesday). HS gymnasium is still in use as Emergency Shelter.</p>
<p>We are one of the lucky 70%. But we lost electricity for a week during Irene. One neighbor has a serious medical condition. He repeatedly called CL&P requesting service. Eventually CL&P sent a truck, which happened to be in the neighborhood when the sick neighbor made his daily plea for power. “We have servicemen working in your neighborhood right now.” Thank you, thank you, thank you responded the neighbor. Only thing was, the “service” amounted to the repairmen climbing a couple poles and cutting down the wire between them. And then they left.</p>
<p>I don’t even quite know what to say anymore. Except that this really stinks. And I don’t know how this can be considered “acceptable” in any way, shape, or form.</p>
<p>I know the big issue is power, which I got back very late Tuesday, so now I’m focussing on cable/internet and phone. Spoke w Verizon this morning. My estimated reconnect is Nov 18. Thankfully we have Comcast for cable/internet and they are scheduled today from 5-7pm. It may be time to say ‘bye-bye’ to the land line.</p>
<p>We’ve had the same battle. Internet is out with no information from the phone company. Phone has been working so it’s not a line problem. Tech support says that they have no info. Customer service has no info. I have a window on my screen with a button to confirm my order to switch to ComCast.</p>
<p>I called the CEO of the phone company and they told me that it should be up now but that they’d have to get back to me on it. ComCast service is 6.5 times faster and their promotional rate is $5 less though their regular rate is $15 more. The price doesn’t matter that much as internet is reimbursed from work.</p>
<p>The landline costs me $15/month and I am strongly thinking of dumping it and replacing it with a mobile for my wife. We currently juggle three phones for four people and use internet phone (Google Voice) quite a bit.</p>
<p>We have an internet phone via an Ooma (purchased at Costco). I am going to seriously question husband (who’s been in Florida during this entire ordeal, that’s another story) if it’s time to cut the land line. While we’ve had the number for 15+ years, I’m not sure it’s worth paying $30+/month for the pleasure of dealing with Verizon. Only oddity with our Ooma number is that it’s out of state for NJ; we picked a number that’s local for the rest of our family. </p>
<p>I did ask the VZ woman if I had FIOS if my reconnect time would be sooner. She gave me some song & dance about how bad the damage was to wires, etc. but wouldn’t answer my question.</p>
<p>If we cut the cord, I will try to get our home phone number transferred to Google Voice. We can then program Google Voice to call all of our mobile phones, our computers or just go to Voice Mail. Google Voice also has spam filtering, transcription to email and call blocking. So we could just turn the number into an answer service or route it to all of our mobiles. If Google Voice can’t do that, then I’d try to route the home phone number to one of our mobiles. I give out my Google Voice number to those that need to call me so my current number doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Very interesting. BCE.
I do worry about google’s rather hefty monopolization, which seems to lead to abuses of data usage… hhmmm.</p>
<p>I am amazed at how you are all putting up with all this.
Hugs.</p>
<p>Still out 6 days and counting…JCP&L customer here…</p>
<p>Someone stuck a gravestone in their Halloween display and labeled it:</p>
<p>JCP&L
10/29/2011</p>
<p>hooked up an extension cord to their generator just so the utility trucks could see it at night…</p>
<p>I am officially cranky…</p>
<p>My mantra is: “Any Minute Now. Any Minute Now. Any Minute Now.”</p>
<p>So far, only disappointment. :(</p>
<p>^ JustaMom5465, ditto. </p>
<p>And rodney, great tombstone.</p>
<p>Back at the library & still no power. At least it’s warm out today but I don’t know if it will warm up the house appreciably. </p>
<p>Our HS is open as a shelter where people can take showers. My wonderful hairdresser washed & styled my hair for me for free today. </p>
<p>Sunday can’t come soon enough, but I’m not really counting on the power being back by then.</p>
<p>Neighbors just called, POWER IS BACK!!! Hallelujah!!!</p>
<p>DD is in Farmington, CT and along with her roommates are braving the cold daily. Based on CP & L 95% still without power. Seems the town leaders are just not as vocal as they should be.</p>
<p>[Out-of-State</a> Crews at Work but Little Progress on Power - Farmington, CT Patch](<a href=“http://farmington.patch.com/articles/south-carolina-crews-at-work-but-little-progress-on-power]Out-of-State”>Out-of-State Crews at Work but Little Progress on Power | Farmington, CT Patch)</p>
<p>My husband and I were on a cruise, docked in Key West, when the storm hit. Sunday was the ONE day that an adult wasn’t with our three teenagers all day. Our friend had to leave in the morning, and my mom didn’t arrive until after midnight. Of course, the power went out. I had left several numbers of several friends, so the kids and the dog went to somebody’s house for the day. When they got home, the power was on. My 13-year-old daughter was flustered, but everything turned out OK.</p>
<p>I left a whole booklet of instructions, but never considered the possibility of an October snowstorm! It was the largest single snowfall in October in Portland’s history. Sigh.</p>
<p>Honduras, I understand from the afternoon radio that town officials from Farmington, Avon, and Simsbury let the power company have it this afternoon 3 very affluent towns with a legitimate beef</p>
<p>My mom, 2 miles away, got restored about 5 minutes ago. </p>
<p>Any minute now. Any minute now.</p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6300 using CC App</p>
<p>Still without power in our town in CT. School has been cancelled all week (after a week’'s cancellation for Hurricane Irene). We were able to leave town and are riding it out out of state. D is a senior and we have no idea when graduation may be held. 10 emergency school closure days are we are are still in Daylight Savings time! Our Y is offering showers to the public and library also has power has extended their hours. The one public school with power is functioning as a warming shelter…</p>
<p>My heart goes out to the poor people stuck working the phone lines for the power companies, and the linemen. They must be so tired of getting screamed at, and the linemen working a dangerous job - we just corrected our neighbor who had connected a generator without turning off the main to his house, which could really injure someone working on the line when the power is turned back on.</p>
<p>Everybody wants to be first, and wants immediate service, but the number of places without power means somebody has to be last, and that will take awhile. After the huge ice storm in upstate NY back in '91 my parents waited three weeks, but they turned it into an adventure. </p>
<p>Sure, it was just depressing to haul the contents of my fridge out to the curb for trash collection tomorrow. But I remind myself that I soon will have heat and electric, which is more than a lot of people in this world can say. Life for me will only suck for a week or so.</p>
<p>No school throughout most of CT. Now my 94 year old father is living with us and my wife who doesn’t have school is starting to go crazy.</p>