Warming Centers Open As Thousands Shiver

(Updated: 1:27 a.m.) As temperatures plummeted toward zero Sunday night into early Monday, ice left behind by a slow-sleet-rain storm was continuing to cause havoc in New Haven and Hamden, downing trees and utility wires and keeping crews scrambling to restore power.

Blame a geographic fluke — responsible for a crucial couple of degrees’ difference — for as many as thousands of homes and businesses losing power. Meanwhile, all that ice transformed streets into glass-like arboreal galleries.

Fallen ice-encrusted power lines left as many 7,000 homes and businesses without power at times in New Haven and Hamden for part of Sunday, sending at least one woman to the hospital and requiring the New Haven police 911 call center and Yale-New Haven Hospital to operate on back-up power systems.

Blame a geographic fluke for most of the misery.

Thirty-two outages left 6,805 New Haven residential and commercial customers without electricity when ice-covered tree limbs broke and downed the power lines, according to city emergency management chief Rick Fontana.

That number was down to about 300 customers without power by 1 a.m., Fontana said in an interview.

He said a woman drove over one of those power lines around 10 a.m. on South Frontage Road. She received an electric shock. She was able to call 911. She’s now in the hospital being evaluated, Fontana said at around 1 p.m.

At 9:30 a.m., the power went off at the 911 call center at 1 Union Ave. and at Yale-New Haven Hospital, according to Fontana. He said emergency back-up power kicked right into gear: ​“They were down for maybe 10 seconds.” At 1 p.m., power was in the process of being restored at both locations, he said.

The parts of New Haven hardest-hit by power outages are East Rock, Newhallville, Upper Westville, and the Hill, Fontana said. Fallen tree limbs downed wires at Willow and Mitchell in East Rock, and at the highway entrance on Willow.

United Illuminating spokesman Ed Crowder advised people to ​“stay far from downed wires and report them to 800 – 722-5584.” (He offered numbers slightly different from Fontana’s: A peak of about 4,000 outages in New Haven, and 8,900 in the UI region.)

As of 8 p.m., around 2,600 Hamden customers remained without power. As of 8:30 p.m., 64 roadways throughout town were partially or completely closed to traffic because of fallen trees and wires. The town has a parking ban in effect: Don’t park on the odd side of the street.

“We will be working through the night to do everything we can to clean and make our roads safer,” Mayor Curt Balzano Leng stated in a press release. ​“We were again hit much harder than weather reports had predicted before the storm, but we were well prepared, rolled with the changes and reacted.” (Leng posted the above video on Facebook of crews restoring power on Four Rod Road.)

Officials prepared to keep people warm — those experiencing power outages alive — during Monday’s well-below-freezing forecasted weather.

The city of Hew Haven opened a warming center at Career High School at 10 a.m. for families experiencing loss of heat and/or power. Fontana said the center will stay open as long as needed Monday: ​“We’ll run that until everyone has their heat back up.”

Meanwhile, homeless shelters have expanded their joint capacity from 75 to 100 beds; as of 1:15 a.m., there were still available beds, according to Fontana.

Hamden is keeping its new warming center for the homeless, at Grace & St. Peters Episcopal Church, open through 7 a.m. Tuesday.

A Few Degrees Made Difference

A fluke of the snow-sleet storm’s geography led to the concentration of problems in New Haven, Fontana said.

Originally it appeared that temperatures would hit the low 40s in the city, melting ice. ​“But if you look — and I witnessed this myself — if you come down I‑95 by Lake Saltonstall, there’s no snow there. It’s 38 degrees there. Here it’s 31; when you’re driving you can see the cloud over New Haven,” Fontana said. That kept it cold enough to burden tree limbs with ice.

Crowder said at last count, 821 people in Hamden were without power as of 1 p.m. Hamden crews were focused particularly on the Charlton Hill and Dunbar Hill areas. The town had hit a height of about 2,500 outages overnight, according to a Facebook post by Mayor Curt Leng.

New Haveners can call the Emergency Operations center at 203 – 946-8221 with any storm-related problems.

The ice is the big problem. But the city did receive a couple of inches of snow. Ten public-works crews were out clearing it.