Lunenburg is my hometown and where my parents still live. I will be there for Christmas. My parents, like many families in the area, are just now getting their electricity back. It took 11 days to restore power to my family’s house.
Every year we pick out a Christmas tree, decorate it, and enjoy spending time together. This year, there will be no Christmas tree or Christmas decorations. The temperature inside my parent’s house went down to 25 degrees. My father drained the pipes (we have forced hot water heat), but when the power came back on, he found two places where the pipes had burst.
There are many families in the area that have not be able to celebrate the holidays with the traditions they are accustomed to and that have burst pipes and expensive repairs. The local power company, Unitil, has done an incredibly poor job of handling the situation. Governor Patrick had to bring in managers from another power company to get things back on track. Now some of the towns in the area are looking for a new utility provider.
Should Unitel be held accountable? Do citizens have the right to sue the power company for the money they lost during the outage and the repairs they are having to make now? This law professor thinks a class-action law suit is in order.
our condo building was flooded 2 years ago when rainwater exceeded the capacity of the sewer system. the sewer lids blew, and the water rushed into our building, destroying 4 units. the occupants all escaped unharmed, but were out of their places for a year during remediation and reconstruction.
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p>association insurance wouldn’t pay anything. it all came down to definitions of water damage vs. flooding. so, members of the association were assessed a whopping special assessment to pay for the repairs.
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p>the sewers that blew were city property under a city park. our association sued the city for relief of the special assessment. a few days before the “drop dead date” (can’t remember the terminology), the city agreed to go to mediation. so, we’ll get something back, but as they say, “the law never makes you whole”. it’s been 2 long years, legal bills, etc., and no one has signed on the dotted line yet.
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p>so i guess what i’m trying to say in a LOT of words đŸ™‚ is if the families want to sue, go for it. but don’t expect a rapid resolution, and don’t expect to get the whole value of everything you feel you’ve lost. maybe your situation is different enough that there can be a larger reward for negligence, but don’t put a down payment on that vacation chateau just yet.
….call your insurance agent.
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p>If your folks don’t have power because the wind blew down the lines, or ice tore them from the house (both are covered causes of loss on a standard policy), they can tap into Loss of Use coverage. It will cover spoiled food, frozen pipes, and BEST of all – a hotel bill until the house is habitable!
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p>Check into your homeowners (or apartment policy, if they have one), and see what coverage they ALREADY have!
At my parent’s house because of the broken pipes. I’m bringing firewood and sleeping by the fireplace. It’ll be a cold Christmas Eve!
keep a hot water bottle next to yourself – it is amazing how long one can keep you toasty.
Wearing socks to bed, and/or using a sleeping bag under the sheets and blankets, if you have one, helps to keep one oasty-toasty warm during these cold nights also, however.
I swear, the town’s happiest with their energy needs are the ones that have public ones. They electricity costs less, is often run better and, best yet, they’re often at the forefront of securing renewable energy (a la Hull). Marblehead, next door, just bought the rights to some wind mills in western mass that will power more than 10% of their town.
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p>It would be nice if these storms helped Massachusetts talk about its energy infrastructure and how best to both improve it and make it more affordable. If we’re going to have mostly private companies, then it’s time to regulate them again.
if the end result was that more towns were able to become munis. Hull is a great example of a successful muni… and remember the rolling blackouts in California a few years ago? Didn’t happen in L.A. because they’re a muni and had their own power taken care of.
http://www.massmunichoice.org/ for more info
Taunton, too, is an example. Municipal power is run by people that answer directly to the customers/voters. Fail at your management duty and you’re out. They don’t have to chase the quarter’s financial results and don’t answer to uncaring politicians in Boston or DC. All the Munis do is answer to the people.
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p>It’s “Power To The People!”
Barney Frank and Chris Dodd failed to regulayed fanne Mae and Freddie mac—-it’s a beutiful thing when progressives take a wrecking bar to our country.
Were you opposed to deregulation of those industries?
Does anyone care to think that utility crews were simply overwhelmed. With large utility companies you have economy of effort to prune trees, larger line crews etc.
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p>California was screwed by deregulation of the electrical utilities. Prices didn’t go down–they went up. The airlines have been on their deathbed since deregulation. One chapter eleven filing after another.
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p>Id Dodd and Frank hadn’t blocked efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie perhaps USA and even the world may noy find itself where we are no.
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p>All in the name of the best of intentions of course. It is always with the best of intentions—even when it blows up in our faces.
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p>Wait until they get their hands on healthcare!
Unitil is basically a VAR for NationalGrid. They buy power from them, rent trucks from them. etc. So 1) they themselves don’t have extra trucks and 2) NationalGrid had nothing to give them. Unitil customers got help once NationalGrid customers were dug out.
That seems like a pretty serious flaw in the system, particularly because most people don’t understand the complexities behind the tradeoff you described.
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p>It sounds like Unitil is “National Grid Lite”, with rates similar but the tradeoff is “if there’s a serious storm you don’t get turned on until all National Grid customers are turned on”.
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p>A cynic might believe that National Grid entered into such an agreement to shed some risk. I wonder if the deal adequately priced in the risk of this happening. If not, National Grid made out like a bandit and screwed over Unitil. And they also got to say “we’re not a monopoly! — see, we have competition”
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p>Follow the money.
I remember the changes being about giving people a choice of utility companies. I think it was about the same time that they allowed other cable companies in. Cable and power were effectively monopolies…
We’ve had this discussion before, but this is a quick recap of what I said then.
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p>You are the BMG Utility Company. You are setting rates, bidding for the right to service lines. Are you going to bid competitively on a mile of line in Somerville, with 500 hookups, or a mile of line in Eastham with 6? You still have to maintain a mile of wire, but the ratepayers along that line pay you to perform that service.
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p>From the beginning of dereg in 1996, urban areas had competition for residential electric service; rural areas got one carrier, usually of last resort like BC/BS, and higher rates. We on Cape have the Cape Light Compact which is still (as far as I know) the only recognized aggregator of residential rates. I can choose now between Dominion and National Grid – one is the compact bid, the other is individual. But that is the exception.
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p>Does anyone in Lunenburg HAVE a choice other than Unitel for residential?
Is that really how it works? If there is “residential competition”, who takes care of the power lines that run up and down the streets when 3-4 different companies “compete” for the various customers?
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p>I used to get DSL from a small local company. They just resold for Verizon, who owned the lines. If I had a problem, they had to call it into Verizon. Verizon paid almost no attention to the problems, in fact, when Verizon disconnected my service to hook up one of their own customers, Verizon then told the small company that they would have to treat my service restoration as a “new install”, and they were on a three-week backlog for those. Needless to say I called Comcast that day and never looked back. But in the end, he who owns the lines sets the rules of the game, and since there can be only one line owner, there is clearly a need for some regulation. And I suspect it still exists in some format.
has nothing to do with bad snow/ice storms and the aftermath. Sometimes nature just has its way (as anyone around here who lived through the infamous May ’77 storm can attest – 8 inches of wet snow on trees with leaves can pretty much take out about every power line imaginable). Not everything is political – in fact having to deal with small or municipal power companies can only make matters worse when pretty much the whole electric grid has to be redone.
Was the territory covered by Unitil just much harder hit than everyone else, or was something else in play?
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p>Why was everyone else back up in a couple of days, but Unitil went longer than a week?
Did they act reasonably or were they negligent as the law professor asserts? I would think 11 days without power would merit and investigation of their actions and internal communications. If it takes a lawsuit to do this then I would say it should happen.
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p>We, like a couple other posters here, have a muni power company in my town and we get great service.
I saw the Gov @ last Sunday’s Patriots game and got close enough, when he mixed with the commoners to …ask what about the folks in Ashby and central Mass with no power?
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p>The Gov smiled and said ” We are working hard on it”. At that point he quickly scampered away back to Krafty Bob’s private boix to continue watching the game.
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p>Shameful lack of state response. Tim Murray is a lightweight.
and got things back on track here in Lunenburg. Murray came to town and met with local officials and then Patrick brought in managers of another power company to take over. The next day we got power back.
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p>Last night we lost power again because of the wind. It was a cold night. This morning the power came back on around 10. There are still trucks and crews all over the town.
But they had no direction from the incompetent Unitil managers. Jeez, pay attention. Read the post before you comment.
I sorry for your parents’ inconvenience. But really. Is this what you’re complaining about? Class-action lawsuits?
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p>When I lived in Newport, RI, which is on an island, we’d have power outages all the time. We learned how to ensure all our water lines were drained, how to shut down the gas service to the house, how to prevent damage from freezing, how to hook up a generator, etc.
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p>New England 1966, 1968 (worse than 11 days, IIRC), the 1978 ice storm, Chicago 1979 … you learn to prepare for bad conditions.
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p>Could be worse. How about those 500 homes burnt to the ground recently in LA?
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p>But, come on, class-action lawsuit?
Power delivery is still a monopoly, and I think portions are still somewhat regulated, aren’t they? If every power company had the same problems as Unitel, then I think that no one would have a right to complain, however, Unitel’s problems seem magnitudes worse than other companies, I think they should have to answer to that.
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p>For example, would it be OK for them to have fewer competent people on staff for such an instance because hiring more would decrease profits? Since the power lines are a monopoly, people have no recourse here.
“ruined Christmas” was sarcasm. It is a joke that one makes to exaggerate the situation. But not having power for 11 days is no laughing matter. It is serious negligence on the part of the power company.
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p>In your comment you are talking about the electrical grid in the 60’s and 70’s. Come on, seriously? Lunenburg used to also lose power for weeks at a time back them. I’m talking about 2008. And I’m not blaming anyone for the natural ice storm (as you suggest by mentioning the natural fires in LA), I’m blaming the power company for taking 11 days to do their job. That is the problem.
Some folks don’t even have power. What are you going to do if we have a real natural disaster and you have no poer for a month. Better strat reading some books on survival—it may save your life.
You are ridiculous. This is not about my ability to survive without power. Believe me, I would last much longer than you in the Wild. I say this because I lived in the desert and on the road for three years. I can survive in many places and situations that people should not have to be in. That has nothing to do with Unitil’s responsible to provide power to paying customers.