[U]tility crews from several states and Canada are converging on the Rutland region to restore service to 5,000 homes and business that remained without power Saturday afternoon due an unexpected windstorm that blew swept through Vermont.
Late Friday afternoon powerful gusts, reaching a top speed of 74 mph, toppled trees and knocked out power to more than 20,000 homes and businesses, hitting Rutland City the hardest.
“It was wild,” said Steve Waite of Rutland, clearing branches blown across East Street and blocking traffic shortly after the storm Friday. “There were just crazy winds, with lots of trees snapping.”
Waite was joined in the East Street cleanup by about a dozen neighbors, teaming up to drag tree limbs from the roadway onto nearby yards.
At one point Friday, GMP shut off power to the entire city at the request of Rutland officials for safety concerns due to all the downed power lines, according to Kristin Carlson, Green Mountain Power’s vice president of external affairs.
Utilities crews from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont Electric Cooperative, Burlington Electric and Stowe Electric joined GMP workers to help restore power to customers in the Rutland region. More crews from Canada and New Hampshire are expected to arrive Saturday.
The restoration effort, Carlson said, has included 500 lineworkers, tree trimmers and support staff, Carlson said.
“We made great progress through the night and the daylight will help us better assess the damage, including using helicopter patrols to inspect transmission lines,” she added.
The storm Friday knocked out power to 21,000 GMP customers. Utility crews working through the night cut that number of customers without power to 4,728 by noon Saturday.
Of those 4,728 customers without power, 4,680 are in the utility’s Rutland district, with 1,245 of those outages in Rutland City, 1,088 in Wallingford, and 598 in Danby.
“We’re really converging all of our resources in the Rutland region,” Carlson said early Saturday afternoon.
It could be until Sunday until power is restored to all GMP customers, she added.
Carlson advised people to stay clear of the many downed power lines caused by the storm.
Forecasters, she added, are also calling for another round of wind to hit this region Saturday afternoon which could cause new scattered outages.
Mayor David Allaire said Friday evening the city opened its operation center at the police station to help respond to the storm.
“All the agencies are coordinating,” the mayor said. “It’s a matter of cleanup and slowly getting the power back on.”
He said he was not aware of anyone suffering injuries as a result of the storm.
“I’m very thankful,” Allaire said. “This could have been much worse.”
In neighboring Rutland Town, Josh Terenzini, chair of Select Board, said Saturday afternoon the cleanup effort is well underway.
“Everybody in the town is working as hard as possible to get things back to normal,” said Terenzini, who is traveling out of state on business. “I certainly wish I could be there.”
He said he’s been in contact with officials back in Rutland Town gathering information on the situation. Terenzini has also been posting storm updates on his Facebook page.
He said he was not aware of the storm causing any injuries in Rutland Town.
Part of a roof at the town’s transfer station and the front of the McKinley Avenue fire station did sustain some damage from the storm, Terenzini said. There are also several downed trees at the Northwood Park complex, he added.
The roughly 30-minute storm that kicked up around 4:30 p.m. Friday produced gusts in the city between 40 mph and 60 mph, with the strongest in Rutland County reported in Wells at 74 mph, according to the National Weather Service in Burlington.
The storm blew over dozens of trees across the city, many taking down power lines as they fell. A large tree that came down in Main Street Park just missed crashing into the bandstand. On Wallace Avenue, a 75-foot maple trees had its roots ripped from the ground.
Strong gusts had outside lawn furniture flying across yards and had enough force to send a backyard trampoline over a fence and onto a neighboring property.
Traveling from one end of the city to another after the storm required taking a maze of side streets as a result of trees and power lines stretched across roadways. Police officers helped direct motorists as traffic lights across the city no longer were functioning.
Firefighters armed with chainsaws cut through trees, clearing them from streets.
“Typically these type of downsloping wind events last a lot longer,” Eric Evenson, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Friday evening.
Evenson said usually when it is raining, wind gusts are not so strong.
“In this case, some of the strongest winds were actually recorded when the precipitation was occurring,” the meteorologist said. “That makes this one a little bit more unusual than we usually see.”
Rutland City resident Lynn Johnston said she has lived in the city for more than three decades and this was the worst windstorm she’s seen.
“It was the Nor’icane all over again,” she said, referring to a 2007 windstorm that blew through city and downed hundreds of trees and left some residents without power for days. “It felt almost like a train coming through.”
