Power outages leave south shore cities and towns in the dark

DUXBURY, Mass. — After a nor'easter ripped through New England on Friday, power outages became a huge issue across the south shore.

Some towns and cities are still completely in the dark, and it could take days for lights to come back on.

At 10 a.m. on Sunday, 191,419 Eversource and National Grid customers were without power in Massachusetts. 93 percent of Scituate was still without power as well.

After the height of the storm, almost every street had at least one tree or line down. Eversource says that they will need days to clean everything up and restore service.

The biggest problem with fixing power lines on Saturday were the wind gusts, since utility companies cannot do any power line work if wind gusts go over 35 mph, and the flooding.

Flood waters refused to completely recede in Marshfield, making it hard for residents to get around and assess the damage to their homes.

Even where the flooding subsided, signs of the ocean remained as rocks and sand littered many streets along the water.

"The beach is all over the front yard - we have shingles from everyone else’s house but the house we are at actually withstood the storm pretty well," said Frank Wilkins of Marshfield.

Trees, utility poles and lines were all knocked down by the wind gusts, which in some places, exceeded over 90 mph.

"Driving around, it’s dangerous there’s a lot of trees laying against wires and intersections you can’t see - the lights are out at the intersections so if you’re not trying to take a right and you’re trying to take a left be very careful, it’s scary," said Butch Welch, a Marshfield resident.

Nearby, in Duxbury, firefighters rushed to safely free a horse from a collapsed shelter in one of the hundreds of calls emergency officials responded to in the aftermath of the storm.

97 percent of the town of Duxbury remained without power on Saturday night, and it could be several days - maybe even a week - before the lights and the heat come back on.

“I got a call from Eversource that said be planned to be without it for several days - I don’t know how they’re going to do it as fast as they say because it’s pretty bad out there," said Darlene McKenney, of Marshfield.

In Hull, the town's Emergency Management Department took to Facebook to express their frustration with power restoration times.

In a post, the department shares with residents that they "were unsuccessful with NGrid and their team" as "they determined it was unsafe to continue to work at night" and said they would "be back in the morning to oversee this operation" as if they were watching their own kids.

Cox Media Group