In Wake of Outages, Sen. Scott Brown Calls for Reliability Review

A number of U.S. senators, including Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), have called for a review of the nation's electric grid reliability in the wake of multiple, lengthy outages.

The senators issued their call in a letter to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Wrentham has seen multi-day outages this year, following and the snowstorm in . The outages, and a perceived delayed response from National Grid, caused anger at the utility company.

The snowstorm left more than 672,000 customers without power in Massachusetts.

Brown said in a statement that a reliable grid is important to public safety and area businesses.

"This year, Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm caused hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents to lose power for days or weeks, often with little information about when the lights would turn back on," Brown said. "I share their frustration and, as we have learned, a reliable power grid is not just critical to our economy, but a matter of life and death.

Kerry noted in a statement that the snowstorm left many without heat.

"When you endure blackouts that come storm after storm, it's obvious there's a fundamental problem that needs to be fixed, pronto," he said. "The problem isn't the utility workers who are out there risking injury in the brutal weather trying to get things fixed — the problem is the system."