900 South End Residents Without Power on New Year's Eve
NSTAR and the City of Boston are reporting a power outage in the South End until 2 p.m. on New Year's Eve.
5 p.m. update: Several hundred South End residents still remain without power. NSTAR says power will be restored to them by 6 p.m.
12:45 p.m update:
Most of those without power have had it restored, according to the city of Boston, although some residents are still without power.
Original article:
More than 900 residents of the South End were suddenly left without power on the morning and early afternoon of New Year's Eve.
NSTAR and the City of Boston reported a power outage in the South End at approximately 9:45 a.m. on Dec. 31 of approximately 963 customers, concentrated in the Concord Square area of the South End.
The outage was caused by an underground equipment failure in the area of West Newman Street and Rutland Street, according to NSTAR spokesperson Michael Durand.
"The number of customers affected is now approximately 600, and we expect full restoration by mid-afternoon," he said in an email at 11 a.m.
The City of Boston and NSTAR said power would be restored in the area by 2 p.m. on Monday.
You can monitor the number of those without power through NSTAR's outage map.
Marilyn Mason
4:00 pm on Monday, December 31, 2012
Power still out at 100 W. Dedham St. Starbucks on Tremont shut down.
Sara Jacobi
4:13 pm on Monday, December 31, 2012
Thanks, Marilyn. Anybody else out there still without power? They said it would be completely restored by 2 p.m...
Aaaaaa
4:44 pm on Monday, December 31, 2012
Still without power at Tremont near the library. Nstar keeps pushing its estimates from 2pm to 4pm, now 6pm. Customer service cannot give a better estimate.
Marilyn Mason
5:06 pm on Monday, December 31, 2012
Power back on at 100 W. Dedham St. Whew!
walter f
12:07 pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2013
8 tenants of mine and my office were affected by the power outage from 10AM until 5:20PM. We had no heat and no power. I have an issue with the way NSTAR kept me informed throughout the outage. I periodically called the number they provided for updates: three times NSTAR moved the estimated power back on in increments of 2 hours each time. The NSTAR website provided no information on the outage map page. I checked the "outage map" throughout the day on my phone. I was trying to get a sense of how the outage was progressing so I could inform my tenants who were growing more restless as the temperatures dropped. I found this to be a useless map. Instead of showing where the outages are, throughout the outage and even today, the map covers most of Boston and fails to pinpoint any affected streets or areas. I did notice that NSTARs map seems to be mostly a PR tool and not a true indication of how the outage is progressing or receding in my neighborhood on Tremont Street in the South End. I would click on the zoom tool, map zoomed into the South End, but the statistics on top of the map remained city wide, not map related... At the peak of the outage, you would read: "out of 296,000 Boston customers, less than 1% were affected"... Had the map been a true outage map and not a PR attempt, as one zoomed into the areas affected, the population served would have been more like 4,800 South End customers, 1,760 without power, 30% affected...
Sara Jacobi
12:15 pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Walter, completely agree about the map. When it was just the South End with the outage, you could actually track the number of customers without power, but then there was another power failure in Roslindale/Mattapan, and its usefulness suddenly disappeared because it was impossible to tell the South End numbers from the other Boston neighborhoods. I wish there was a better way to get neighborhood specific information rather than continuing to contact them every hour (as I was doing, too.)