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Community Corner

On the Brink of Battiness: Greenwich Residents Go Days Without Power

Charlie Philips, who went for five days without power, said coming home to a dark house was making him go "batty."

Charlie Philips wasn’t sure if he could take another night of candles, canned food and no TV.

“It was definitely starting to wear on me — make me go a little batty,” said the resident of Hoover Street in Riverside, whose house was without power for five days following Tropical Storm Irene. “The first couple nights weren’t that bad, but by the time I got to night three, I started to climb the walls."

Philips, who doesn’t have much in the way of friends or family in the area, said he tried to go out as much as possible during the day light hours – to places like the , which extended its hours for those without power following the storm, and the , where he could still get a hot meal — “but when it got late and it was time to head home, that was what got me really down. No light, no TV, no way to cook — by night three I started to just take Advil PM right away when I got home, so I could just force myself to go to sleep.”

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Philips admitted that he wasn’t well prepared for the storm.

“I had a flashlight and some batteries — but after trying to read a book the first night, out of sheer boredom, my batteries quickly went dead and then I mostly did everything in whatever ambient light I could find.”

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He also didn't have a radio, "and without even a radio, you sort of start to feel isolated," he said.

Philips said unlike some of his neighbors, “I don’t really have the resources or financial means to get out of the area or find alternate housing when a storm comes — basically I’m looking at a shelter.” He said he was more inclined to hunker down and ride the storm out.

Philips, who lost power at about 6 p.m. Sunday, said he thought he was in the clear when he got power back at his home at about 7 p.m. Monday. But at about 10 a.m. Tuesday it inexplicably went out again “due to some accident that happened on the Post Road — I’m not sure what — there were a lot of rumors that someone had brought a wire down.”

The power would be out for another two days — until about 8 p.m. Thursday.

“The one thing that really bothered me was that it seemed like everyone around our neighborhood had power – most of the businesses on the Post Road were all open — yet here we were, this isolated pocket with no power for days on end," Philips said.

So is Philips angry at CL&P's rate of response to the storm damage?

"Well it was tough when we lost power the second time on Tuesday, because we were told, anecdotally, that CL&P's response was that they didn't have the crews to double back through the area again... that we'd have to wait," he said. "But overall, I'm not angry at them. I think most people just wish there was more detailed information forthcoming — and that they had a little more control over the response. People want CL&P to acknowledge them when they say 'Hey, over here, I've been without power for five days.'"

As of midnight Monday CL&P's outage map was showing that there were still 83 CL&P customers in Greenwich without power. This conflicts with an on Patch with figures provided by the town that the number of Greenwich residents without power had dropped to 25 — and a report in the Greenwich Time saying that by 7:30 p.m. the number of residents without power had dropped to only two.

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