Community Corner

Middletown Spared Worst of Hurricane Sandy's Wrath: Halloween is On

Other than wires and trees down in some sections of the city and power outages as high as 2,012 homes, the head of emergency operations says Middletown suffered light to moderate damage.

 

Editor's note: For all Hurricane Sandy-related stories in Middletown and Connecticut, see here. Please upload your photos and videos from the storm here.

Update 1:26 p.m.: Halloween will proceed as planned, Mayor Dan Drew has announced.

Find out what's happening in Middletownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Compared to towns along the Connecticut shoreline, which were , the city was spared any major damage from Hurricane Sandy.

“We’re looking at a pretty calm day, with 5-15 mile-per-hour-winds today,” said Emergency Management Director Bruce Driska this morning.

Find out what's happening in Middletownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

By 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, 1,096 or 4 percent of CL&P customers in Middletown remained without electricity, compared to 487,310, or 39 percent, statewide. The curfew, put in place by Mayor Dan Drew at 8 p.m. Monday, was lifted at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

Driska said compared to Hurricane Irene last year, Middletown fared well.

“The damage was light to moderate, not severe,” said. “We had some reports of wires ripped from houses.” Driska said officials had thought perhaps more rural areas of the could would have been harder hit, but that just wasn’t the case.

“We had trees on vehicles, but nothing severe at all.” The city did have one CL&P utility truck at its disposal throughout the storm, which was very helpful, allowing linemen to restore power to some homes. Public works crews kept up with road closures throughout the height of the storm, which has since been downgraded to a post-tropical weather system.

The number of CL&P outages in Middletown reached as high as 2,012 late Monday.

Just before 5 a.m. Tuesday, Middletown Fire responded to a basement couch fire at a home on Forest Street, near the Middlefield town line.

None of the four occupants of the home were injured, according to the deputy fire chief, the home has been “turned back over to the owners” and the fire is under investigation. The cause is not yet known.

Driska said the Middletown High School emergency shelter, which had 55 residents there overnight, is now empty and will close at noon today.

After a 10:30 a.m. briefing with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Driska said, the city’s emergency operations center at city hall will be partially staffed.


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