The calm after the storm

Friday, March 5, 2010

Staff photo by Don Himsel Scenes like this one, in Nashua, were unhappily common last week after a storm with winds topping 60 mph went through the region, toppling trees and causing power outages throughout the state. Hollis and Brookline were relatively enscathed.

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Public safety and public works officials in Hollis and Brookline breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday morning, saying they were grateful that the storm that pummelled the state last Thursday night had left relatively little damage.

Meanwhile, students in SAU 41 returned to school in the two towns without having missed even one day following a vacation week that couldn’t have been better timed, at least from the perspective of parents and school officials.

“We’re not in too bad shape,” Hollis Public Works Director Jeff Babel said. “We escaped the damage.”

Hollis Police Chief Russell Ux said the town’s emergency management team met regularly after the storm hit, taking reports from the field about power outages and checking on residents living in elderly housing and at a nearby mobile home development.

“We put boots to the ground and went out to touch base with people,” Ux said, adding that there were no requests for emergency shelter.

“People were more prepared,” Ux said, contrasting last week’s storm and power outage with the 2008 ice storm. “We actually fared pretty well.”

Ux said that Friday, according to Public Service of New Hampshire, 82 percent of the town was without power.

By Sunday, however, just 130 customers were still in the dark.

“We had briefings over the weekend, and we were monitoring outages,” Ux said. “The saving grace this time was we did not have extreme temperatures.”

In the event of an emergency, the town’s fire station becomes the local warming station, and while no one came to the station seeking shelter, Ux said, a number residents stopped in over the weekend to pick up bottled water, supplies left over from the ice storm.

“This particular event did not have a lot of impact on us,” Ux said.

Brookline Police Chief Thomas Goulden made a similar assessment Monday morning.

“I can tell you that we did not have a lot of calls during the storm. Things seem normal today,” Goulden wrote in an e-mail exchange.

Likewise, Wes Whittier, the Brookline ambulance director, described the aftermath of the storm as “nothing serious.”

The town recently purchased a reverse 911 system that automatically calls town residents in the event of a public safety emergency to provide information and directions. But Friday morning, Whittier said, Brookline officials decided it wasn’t necessary to activate the system.

“There weren’t enough outages in town to use CodeRed,” he said. “Selected areas were out, areas served by other towns, Rocky Road (near Hollis) and Ruonalla Road (near Milford).”

Whittier said the town was lucky.

“I don’t think the storm hit as hard as in Hollis and Amherst,” he said. “Public Service was right on top of it, and they got the power back quickly.”

Nor were there any serious traffic accidents after the storm, although the Brookline ambulance crews responded to the usual number of calls, including some traffic mishaps brought on by slippery road conditions.

“People forget after such a nice stretch of weather that the town doesn’t use salt and the roads get pretty slick,” Whittier said, explaining that years ago, Brookline residents voted not to use salt to treat the roads, an effort to protect town drinking water, which comes from wells.

On Monday, however, Whittier reported that all was well.

“We did not have really much of an impact,” he said. “This is New England, and you’re going to have storms, and you might have to wait it out a couple days.”

Hattie Bernstein can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 24, or hbernstein@cabinet.com.