The storms that passed through southern New Hampshire late Saturday afternoon caused power outages and downed trees in several area communities.
According to Martin Murray of Eversource, there were significant issues caused by trees and limbs and branches hitting wires and bringing down 43 poles across the state. However, he said the 500 Eversource linemen had all but 1 percent of the 61,000 outages cleared up in 24 hours, a significant effort he said in challenging hot weather conditions.
“The majority of the outages we experienced this weekend were related to tree branches and trees breaking and falling onto the electric lines and poles,” said Bob Allen, manager of Vegetation Management for Eversource New Hampshire. “Because we have been experiencing an extended period of extremely dry weather conditions, trees in the region are especially brittle and prone to breaking.”
Local crews were supported by Eversource workers from Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Londonderry Fire Department’s Division Chief of Fire Prevention Brian Johnson was helping with dispatch during the Saturday night storm. He said the hardest hit areas included Young Road, Dan Hill Road and Mammoth Road at Hall Road, where trees and limbs and wires were down and some road closures occurred.
He said during the hours of 6:30 to 9 p.m. Londonderry Dispatch, which dispatches for Londonderry and Hampstead, had 23 calls between the two towns. He said Battalion Chief Mike McQuillen handled the Londonderry issues, prioritizing them and getting crews quickly dispatched to the more serious.
“We lost power at the Central Station, and the South Station was without power for 14 hours,” he said, noting generators powered the stations while the electricity was out.
Johnson said a shed and home at 2 Pheasant Run Road were hit by a falling tree during the previous storm on July 18 and had the bad luck to get hit again Saturday night by a falling tree. A house on Pendleton Road was hit by a tree Saturday as well.
“We had lots of trees and branches on wires and several small fires but apparatus was sent to take care of these,” said Johnson. “It was definitely an interesting evening. And there were some parts of town that had only a little wind and were unaware of what was happening in other parts of town.”
He said he thought power was restored to most Londonderry residents by Sunday.