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Windstorm did much damage to trees, poles, wires in town

Friday, March 5, 2010

Bedford, NH, February 26, 2010: On Friday morning, North Amherst Road in Bedford was impassable, due to downed powerlines, as a result of high winds the previous night. All homes in the immediate vicinity were without power.

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Bedford, NH, Sunday February 28, 2010. Old Bedford Road was closed as a result of a pole that was snapped in three by a falling tree in the wind storm on Thursday night. Memorial Elementary School, on the right of this picture, was without power and remained closed on Monday.

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Bedford, NH, Sunday February 28, 2010. 52 Holbrook Road in Bedford was smashed by a falling tree in the wind storm on Thursday night.

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BY KELLY McGRATH

Staff Writer

BEDFORD – Bedford was one of the towns hit worst by last week’s unprecedented windstorm.

“There’s very high structural damage throughout” Bedford, Town Manager Russ Marcoux said Monday morning.

Bedford was among the last two dozen towns to be declared fully restored by Public Service of New Hampshire, which happened by the start of Wednesday. In the immediate region, only Merrimack was similarly hit.

The power outage was the second worst in New Hampshire history, PSNH said, behind only the December 2008 ice storm. It happened when winds topping 60 mph hit trees, sending them through homes and across power lines.

A reported 269,000 PSNH customers were left without power across the state on Friday, compared with about 330,000 blacked out by the ice storm.

In Bedford, the Emergency Operations Center was activated, and 14 major roads were listed as blocked or impassable at various times.

“That whole area where Memorial School is was really bad,” Marcoux said. “There’s tons and tons of damage.”

One Bedford resident returned from vacation to find three feet of water in his basement, while a house on Holbrook Road was crushed by fallen trees.

But the one positive, Marcoux said, was that the recently installed generators in BCTV and the Town Office Building allowed them to be up and running after the storm.

“We were able to keep all that live communication open that we wouldn’t have been able to do had we not had a generator,” he said.

“To literally see trees take (high-tension wires) right down to the ground, that’s heavy duty; that’s mother nature’s fury.”

PSNH said the damage was because of ferocious winds, which flirted in some places with the 74 mph designation of hurricane.

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Windstorm did much damage to trees, poles, wires in town

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