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Third Update: Wrentham Sees Second Day of Outages as Snowtober Woes Persist

Trick-or-treating postponed until Friday.

 

Third update: King Philip will be closed tomorrow.

Second update: The Wrentham Elementary Schools will be closed tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 1.

Update: As of 3pm, National Grid reported that 4,316 of its 4,644 customers (92.9 percent) in Wrentham were without power. Estimated time of restoration remains Nov. 3 (Thursday).

In a release issued Monday afternoon, the company reported that its areas of emphasis are central and western Massachusetts, Merrimack Valley and the greater Franklin/Wrentham area.

“We realize the major inconvenience it is for people to be without power and want our customers to know we are doing everything we can to restore power as quickly as possible,” Marcy Reed, the president of National Grid Massachusetts said in a statement.  “However, even with all the resources that we are deploying to restore power, it takes time to repair damage as extensive as what we incurred this weekend.”

Original: Wrentham entered its second day without power Monday as outages caused by Saturday's snowstorm persisted.

As of this morning, National Grid reported that 4,357 of its 4,644 customers in town were without power. The town is estimated to have a full restoration of power on Thursday.

Trick-or-treating in town has been postponed to Friday evening.

The town's schools, as well as the King Philip schools, are closed today. In an automated call this morning, Wrentham Elementary Superintendent Jeffrey Marsden said there will be an update tonight as to whether there will be school on Tuesday.

Attleboro's La Salette Shrine has been opened as a regional shelter, and the Wrentham Public Safety Building is open to senior citizens and those with young children.

This is the second protracted power outage the town has seen in as many months. Tropical Storm Irene caused many of the same issues, and led to a hearing in Attleboro regarding National Grid's communication with towns during emergencies.

Residents with power issues should direct their inquiries to National Grid at 1-800-322-3223.

Related Topics: Halloween, National Grid, Power Outage, Power Outages, Snowtober, and wrentham

Rick DiGiacomo

11:33 am on Monday, October 31, 2011

I just googled the town of Wrentham to find the Wrentham Elementary school page but that page is down. I tried to get on the Town of Wrentham homepage (http://www.wrentham.ma.us/) and got the following message:

Please pardon the interruption. Our website is under construction.
Please note that the option to pay your real estate taxes online is available at
http://www.unitaxonline.com
Reminder: Taxes are due in the treasurer collector's office Tuesday Nov 1st.

Really? The school's website is down & the Town's site is under construction? There's no Police Department site other than a Facebook Page? Perhaps google got it wrong and there's some official page I'm not finding but if in fact the Wrentham town, school & PD pages are down because they're under construction, that is unconscionable.

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Kim Shipala

4:06 pm on Monday, October 31, 2011

Try going to http://www.nixle.com/ to sign up for emergency updates from the police department. Maybe the websites' servers are affected by the power outage, so that's why the sites are down?

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Rick DiGiacomo

12:08 pm on Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Thanks Kim, I appreciate the reply and the link. I think in this day and age the Town should have a working website even if they have a new one under construction, it's not rocket science to keep the old one until the new one is ready. At least the school site is up and running today so maybe your theory on the power outage it correct however I'm amazed the school would host a website locally without any backup plan. I own a small business locally and we have a website, a mobile site, a facebook page and they were an integral part of maintaining services to our cutomers during the week we were without power during Irene. When power is out is precisely when people need access to information and the town not having a site up and running is a disgrace. Even more galling is the one thing they have posted on the "under construction" site is a link so you can pay your property taxes.

Tino Volpe

3:22 pm on Tuesday, November 1, 2011

We took the school's website being down to mean the schools had no power. The website came back up this morning and we just got our power back at 3:00PM THANK GOD. I'm guessing there will be school tomorrow.

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Rick DiGiacomo

3:26 pm on Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Tino, I got a robocall earlier, Wrentham Elementary is open tomorrow

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