Sunday morning update: Officials at NSTAR expect to continue assessment of the damage today for the more than 198,000 customers still without power, mainly located in Southeastern Massachusetts, which was hardest hit by Friday's blizzard.
By Saturday afternoon several hundred extra hands had arrived from parts of New England not affected by power outages, bringing their track vehicles and back hoes to work on repairs. Before line and tree crews could be mobilized, officials worked with communities to get out on cleared roads and assess damage firsthand.
By midday Saturday, as customer reports came in, NSTAR listed more than 254,000 customers without power, almost all of them on Cape Cod. National Grid reported 163,000 without power. The number of National Grid customers without power as of early Sunday was just over 75,000.
Although crews began to work as soon as company officials deemed it safe to go out, focusing first on main transmission areas that provide power to a larger number of customers, an NSTAR spokesperson warned that it could take days to get everyone back on line.
