It Was A Wild Week Of Weather

By Andrew Gorosko

This week Newtown experienced what seemed like storms from two seasons — first spring and then winter.

A quick-moving intense rainstorm accompanied by high, gusty winds amid mild temperatures hit the area on Monday, bringing down many tree limbs and electric lines, resulting in scattered power outages, difficult travel conditions, and some flooded basements.

On Thursday morning, a burst of snow, which preceded an advancing cold front from the west, quickly coated local roads, creating hazardous, icy conditions that caused many motor vehicle accidents starting at about 7:30 am on both Interstate 84 and local roads. Some collisions involved multiple vehicles.

Police responded to many accidents across town, most of which did not involve injuries. Traveling up or down hills was especially difficult as vehicles lost their traction on the icy pavement and went into uncontrolled skids before hitting other objects, sometimes other vehicles.

Police were especially busy Thursday morning as they responded to one emergency call after the next.

Amid the rash of motor vehicle accidents, local ambulance volunteers responded to several medical calls at residences.

During the traffic congestion and hazardous driving posed by the difficult weather conditions, a town road department truck became involved in a collision with another unspecified vehicle in Sandy Hook Center on Thursday morning, according to police radio transmissions.

On Tuesday, Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P) spokesman Mitch Gross said that at the height of local electric outages at 1:30 pm on Monday, about 595 CL&P customers in Newtown were without electric service.

The electric outages started occurring about noon. CL&P’s electric restoration work was completed about 6 am on Tuesday, Mr Gross said. CL&P has 10,866 customers in Newtown.

Statewide, about 17,500 of CL&P’s 1.2 million customers lost electric service due to the storm, Mr Gross said. The storm complicated the electric repair work due to its heavy rains, high winds, and low visibility conditions, he said.

Mr Gross termed the adverse weather as “not a big storm, but a challenging one.”

Most typically, the high winds that accompanied the storm brought down trees limbs, which fell onto electric lines, resulting in the power outages, he said.

The heavy rains caused serious erosion on local dirt roads, requiring road regrading by town crews to make the washed-out earthen road surfaces suitable for vehicular travel.

Also, blocked stormwater drains resulted in water backups, causing localized ponding.

The town’s five volunteer fire companies responded to 23 emergency calls on Monday, the large majority of which were storm-related, generally involving tree limbs falling and bringing down electric lines with them.

Hook & Ladder and Sandy Hook firefighters responded to the highest number of service calls, among the five companies.

The bulk of those fire calls came in from late morning to the early afternoon, the period during which the storm was most intense.

Firefighters responded to storm-related calls on streets including Wasserman Way, Castle Hill Road, Head O’ Meadow Road, Currituck Road, Honey Lane, Butterfield Road, Longview Heights Road, Bear Hills Road, Bradley Lane, Scenic View Drive, Hattertown Road, Berkshire Road, Charter Ridge Drive, Platts Hill Road, Hanover Road, and Jeremiah Road.

Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company Chief Bill Halstead said that Monday’s bad weather made for a busy day for firefighters. Eight of the ten calls to which Sandy Hook firefighters responded that day were storm-related, he said.

Based on the particular conditions that firefighters encountered when they arrived at emergency scenes, they would temporarily block roads to travel, as required by the circumstances, he said.

In their incident logs for Monday, Newtown Police listed 17 “public hazard” calls, the large majority of which were storm-related. The bulk of those calls to police came between 10:30 am and 1 pm, when storm conditions were most intense.

Fred Hurley, town director of public works, said that many local dirt roads received heavy erosion due to the intense storm. He noted that frozen ground conditions resulted in high stormwater runoff and consequent soil erosion.

Among the dirt roads or dirt road sections requiring regrading by the town were Pond Brook Road, Ox Hill Road, Chipmunk Trail, Cricket Trail, Sanford Road, Morris Road, Point O’ Rocks Road, and Lakeview Terrace, he said.

The storm caused various types of damage to dirt roads depending upon the location, Mr Hurley said.

Ox Hill Road, a dirt road that links Mt Nebo Road to Hundred Acres Road, received heavy washout damage, he said.

In some cases the storm waters caused foot-deep rutting on dirt roads, he said.

Town road crew members worked into the nighttime on Monday to make the damaged dirt roads passable to automobiles, he said.

“Every rainstorm is a little different,” Mr Hurley said, explaining that the particular problems caused by heavy rains vary from storm to storm.

Fortunately, the heavy rains of Monday diminished by early afternoon, allowing repair work to start in daylight conditions, he said.

The town rented the use of an additional road grader and bulldozer after the storm to expedite road repairs, he said. More than 30 town road crew members worked all across town to solve storm-related problems, he said.