Reported at ~7:15 AM this morning on WGY, Schenectady County has joined the growing list of local municipalities in declaring a State of Emergency. No unnecessary travel is permitted to allow access to emergency vehicles and utility crews to clear downed trees and wires.
Anyone without power? I live on Rt 7 near Schalmont and we never lost power. Parts of Coldbrook are without power. The roads were great coming into work.
The power went out in my area of Duanesburg (near borders with Schoharie and Montgomery counties) at ~ 4 AM for less than a minute. I was awakened by the beeping of the computer UPS.
Roads (I-88, Thruway, I-90) were all clear at 7:00 AM. Another story in North Greenbush / Defreetsville where there are trees and wires down everywhere.
Ice and obstacles on area roads, fires around the region December 12, 2008 - 1:37 AM Chris White
UPDATED 9:15 a.m.
Heavy ice is bringing down tree limbs and power lines around the Capital Region.
Small fires are being reported around the area as are transformer explosions, according to observations and police scanners.
STATE OF EMERGENCIES
Columbia, Greene and Schenectady Counties have declared a State of Emergency restricting unnecessary road travel.
The following towns have declared state of emergencies and drivers are asked not to travel unnecessarily: Rotterdam, Stillwater Halfmoon and Clifton Park.
The state of Massachusetts has also declared a state of emergency.
POWER OUTAGES
National Grid, police and fire crews are fanned out around the around the area. More than 100,000 customers were without power at 6:00 a.m. In Albany County, more than 50,800 customers were in the dark. In Schenectady County, almost 35,972 customers are without power. Rensselaer County had about 28,427 and Saratoga was topping 24,700 according to the company's Web site.
Columbia County has 14,000 customers without power; Schoharie County 2,946; and Washington County, 4,642.
Many NYSEG customers were also without power, according to outage information reported by street on its Web site. In Saratoga County, 16,000 are without power; the number is 10,000 in Columbia County and 6,000 in Rensselaer County. A spokesperson at NYSEG said some could be without power until Monday.
Schenectady County has set up warming shelters for those without power. They are located at the Carman Fire Station on Hamburg St; the Rotterdam Fire District on Curry Road; the Stamford Heights Fire District on Central Avenue; and the East Greenbush Fire Department.
The county is also working to set up shelters.
ROAD CLOSURES
Crews shut down Route 7 at Vly Road because of a transformer problem.
Route 9 in Schodack is closed between Route 20 and the Columbia County Line.
Route 50 in Glenville has been closed between Gleason Road and Heckeler Drive.
ACCIDENTS
The following accidents are being attended to and the immediate areas are probably seeing restricted road use as a result:
In Troy, the Empire Ambulance Building on River St. has partially collapsed after trees and heavy ice fell on it. (7:25 a.m.)
In Albany County, a woman has been hit by a falling tree branch. (7:25 a.m.)
DELAYS AND CANCELLATIONS
Many schools have delayed or canceled classes. Click on the School Watch tab for the latest.
Albany International Airport is open and a spokesman said the weather conditions forced the cancelation of 14 flights between 5 and 9:30 a.m.
I just heard on the scanner that a power pole just came down on Miles Standish Road in Colonial Manor. I think the roads are excellent, but with the wind kicking up, I think it will be too dangerous to drive. There will be a chance of more trees and power lines coming down.
I talked to some folks in Scotia and they are without power. And someone who just traveled I88 said that traffic is moving at about 30 to 35 mph. and that it was snowing and blowing quite heavily in that area.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
I live up the road from Brad about 3 miles and also lost power for a minute around 4am. I lost Time Warner (no surprise there.) and don't have internet or phone service. We are lucky so far........atleast we still have power, I can live without internet and the phone is almost a blessing. They said it could be days before power comes back for some. The roads are crystal clear. Great job County DPW, State DOT and Town Highway!!!!!!!!!
My husband called me from home to tell me that our phone(verizon) line is down, but the phone still works. And that our cable (TW) line was also down. Internet works but not the cable tv.
I called TW and they will be there tomorrow. I called Verizon who had me on hold or going through prompts for over 20 minutes and they finally said that they will have someone there Tues 12/16/08.
I have had many past issues with Verizon's service dept. After this, I just may change to the TW phone service. (Their ALL IN ONE package)
I really do understand that they have an extremely heavy work load right now. But when I am calling a COMMUNICATION business, I would like to actually TALK to someone in a reasonable amount of time. Even during their slow times, I still find that a problem with Verizon.
TW took not even 5 minutes before I spoke to a HUMAN BEING!
Thanks for the update, JoAnn, all. My power went out at 4:30 this morning (at just the right time to wake me up). It came back on a couple minutes before 2 PM. My cable is still screwed up, but I assume it'll be fixed at the same time as yours. As a child who grew up in the 80's, I have a few things going through my mind...at 2PM, it was "I HAVE THE POWER!" Right now, with my dysfunctional cable, all I have to say is..."I WANT MY MTV (and other channels)."
I'm in Coldbrook, and our section lost power around 1:30am. Finally came back on around 8pm. We're on the same grid as the Hannford Plaza, so while everyone around us had power, we were at the mercy of Schenectady City DPW to clear up stuff so the National Grid people could fix things. I'm very displeased with Schenectady City DPW ATM. Their incompetence significantly slowed things down today.
JoAnn and Kevin, I have the all in one package. When TW came back online today I had tv and phone but no internet. When my husband got home he unplugged everything connected to internet for a few minutes and when he plugged it back in it worked fine. They say sometimes you need to reset "stuff" and the only way to do it is to unplug it. It won't hurt to try it. I love roadrunner, I can take or leave the phone service, but I hate TW's cable tv. We almost constantly have blocks and then it snaps out and back in. They have given me new boxes and rewired and it still does it. I loved Direct TV, in the ten years that we had them I think we only had a problem one time. In the couple of years we've had TW we have had atleast 10 or 12 reported problems and the rest of the time we just put up with it.
Officials say power may be out for days BY KATHLEEN MOORE AND MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporters
Century-old, healthy trees were leveled by the weight of the season’s first ice storm, blocking major roads, smashing into houses, bringing down power lines and, in one case, crushing a passing car. The Capital Region spent the day trying to dig out, fighting not only the continuing ice but also the crashing trees and downed power lines that cut service at the height of the problem to nearly 300,000 utility customers. “You could hear the trees and limbs cracking. At that point, I knew it was pretty bad,” said Clifton Park Supervisor Philip Barrett, who toured his town at 4 a.m. and then declared Clifton Park’s fi rst state of emergency in decades. “This storm is something we’ve never seen before, a storm with this much destruction,” he said. “Not only secondary routes but many major roads were dangerous or c o m p l e t e l y impassable. It wasn’t just the little branches falling in the road, it was whole trees. … There were just trees everywhere.” In the city of Schenectady, trees fell on two houses and just missed dozens of others. But several suburbs were even harder hit. In Glenville, a tree fell on a car traveling down Maple Avenue near the Air National Guard base. The road remained closed into the evening with the tree on the abandoned car. Niskayuna had so many downed trees that major routes were still closed after sunset Friday, while Schenectady’s roads had mostly reopened, with trunks and branches neatly stacked by the side of road. Trees pulled down power lines throughout the Capital Region, and some wires fell from the weight of the ice alone. Nearly 300,000 homes and businesses lost power, and at 7 p.m. power was still out for 200,000, according to National Grid. The damage was particularly noticeable in Clifton Park, where the retail core that normally would be bustling was dark and silent. The storm also knocked out power to about half a million customers in New England. By sundown, there were still 250,000 without power in Massachusetts, 8,600 in New Hampshire and 2,800 in Rhode Island. In the Capital Region, half of Schoharie County’s households spent a frigid day without power. More than half the businesses and homes in the city of Schenectady were in the dark as well, and power was out for thousands in the suburbs. The damage was so severe that National Grid held an hourlong conference call with every mayor and supervisor in the area at 4 p.m. to warn them that power may not be restored for days. SHELTERS OPENED Some towns opened warming stations and shelters as early as 6:30 a.m. But in Schenectady County, only one shelter had been opened before National Grid’s conference call. Afterward, the city quickly opened warming stations at SCCC and the main branch of the library. The fieldhouse at Union College is now a temporary shelter, as is the Scotia-Glenville High School. But apparently Capital Region residents are a hardy lot. Shelters did not see strong demand Friday evening. Instead, residents lined up at gas stations to fill gas containers for generators and crowded into stores to pick up kerosene, a common fuel for space heaters. Lines were particularly long in Schoharie County. Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton said many city residents should prepare to spend the weekend without power. As of Friday night, 15,000 homes and businesses in the city were without power, as well as 6,000 in each of the surrounding suburbs. “We’re hopeful … we could see some power restored in certain parts of the city as we speak, and in fact we have seen some come back. But by and large the bulk of this is going to be a multi-day event,” Stratton said. National Grid brought more than 1,300 tree and line crews to restore power, bringing in help from its Long Island and Buffalo sections and tapping assistance from as far away as Michigan. The company was able to double its crews over the course of the day, but as workers surveyed neighborhoods, they found more and more areas without power. The number of houses and businesses in the dark rose steadily all day even as workers restored power to other locations. “The damage is quite extensive, and we estimate full power will be restored after several days,” company spokesman Patrick Stella said. The ice storm, which begin Thursday evening and intensified overnight, led to the early closure or cancellation of almost every school in the Capital Region. High school sports games were cancelled, but the show went on at local concert venues. Revolution Hall in Troy spent much of the day advertising the fact that it had power and would not be cancelling the popular Donna the Buffalo concert scheduled for Friday night. Despite the trees and the ice, there were no critical injuries reported during the storm, Ellis Hospital spokeswoman Donna Evans said. CREWS EXTEND HOURS The biggest danger now comes from exhaustion, Schenectady officials said. Fire Chief Robert Farstad was trying to rotate out fi refighters who had worked 16 or more hours of overtime. Schenectady’s Commissioner of General Services Carl Olsen said early Friday he was so busy dealing with the storm’s after-effects that he had not been home in 36 hours. At the fire department, Deputy Chief Rod Rosate said the department was about to break its record for the most calls in one day. “I think we’ve done like 300 calls,” he said just after 6 p.m. “Everybody’s just kind of punch drunk.” The previous record was Jan. 19, 1996, when the department answered just under 300 calls. That was a day of cold rain that swamped the area and triggered a mudslide that wiped out Tel Oil on Broadway and killed Thomas Frank of Amsterdam. Friday’s calls were frustrating as well as exhausting because firefighters so often had to wait for hours for National Grid to cut power to downed lines. “There were just so many down. There’s only so fast they could go,” Rosate said. “So we stood by for hours next to live wires because they were popping onto the ground or into the air.” Even in emergencies, it took a long time for National Grid to reach the power lines. It took the company 30 minutes to cut power to Tony’s Market when a downed wire set fire to the store. The business was destroyed while fi refighters waited. Meteorologist Bob Kilpatrick of the National Weather Service in Albany said the ice storm dumped 2 inches of liquid precipitation — rain, sleet and snow — on the region and three-quarters of an inch of solid ice. A half-inch of ice “amounts to a lot of weight,” Kilpatrick said, and is enough to break tree limbs and snap power lines. In some areas, where the soil is still soft, it is enough to uproot trees, he said. Meteorologist Brian Frugis said the right conditions occurred to create the ice storm, which he called a rare event. “Rain combined with extended cold temperatures created it,” he said. The last ice storm to cripple the area was about a decade ago, Kilpatrick said. That storm left parts of northern New York and southern Canada without power for ...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00101
JoAnn and Kevin, I have the all in one package. When TW came back online today I had tv and phone but no internet. When my husband got home he unplugged everything connected to internet for a few minutes and when he plugged it back in it worked fine. They say sometimes you need to reset "stuff" and the only way to do it is to unplug it. It won't hurt to try it. I love roadrunner, I can take or leave the phone service, but I hate TW's cable tv. We almost constantly have blocks and then it snaps out and back in. They have given me new boxes and rewired and it still does it. I loved Direct TV, in the ten years that we had them I think we only had a problem one time. In the couple of years we've had TW we have had atleast 10 or 12 reported problems and the rest of the time we just put up with it.
We had Direct TV for about 6 years. And although we never had a problem with it, the costs seemed to soar regularly. We switched to TW with what they called, a Direct TV Buy Back special. We received a discounted price for the first year. We never had a problem with TW. In my experience with them, I have found their service to be far more superior to any in their field. Not only do I get to speak to a HUMAN within minutes, they are professional, friendly, prompt and helpful. Of course this is just based on my own experiences.
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