Westfield sustains several dozen power outages - WFSB 3 Connecticut
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Sandy brought power lines down across Western Massachusetts and cut power to hundreds of thousand across the Bay State.
According to Western Mass Electric Company's outage map about 100 percent of Russell residents were without power for much of the night while their neighbors to the West in Westfield had few challenges and only several dozen power outages.
"Basically to use a term we were springloaded," said Westfield Emergency Management Director Jim Wiggs.
Wiggs and his team have spent the past week preparing for whatever Sandy brought to the Whip City.
"There has been some debris coming down they've had to remove it and the police had to get out there and block roads and also a couple times the lights have gone out so they've had to direct traffic," Wiggs said.
Those were some of the challenges Westfield emergency personnel responded to.
At the peak of the power outages only around 40 people were in the dark.
As of later Monday evening that number dropped to the teens as crews were able to quickly respond to power outages mostly caused by falling branches.
Wiggs says it may seem like Sandy's wrath wasn't that bad in Westfield, but the preparations leading up to Monday were key.
"I think were being very efficient we have periodic conference calls throughout the day to touch bases with all the departments and then any departments that needed assistance could call anytime," Wiggs said.
Last year Wiggs and his team learned firsthand just how important preparation is.
"By this time last year we were experiencing severe power outages, we had over 200 people in a shelter the roads were just cluttered stuff," he said.
This year the shelters didn't have to open. But Wiggs says preparing for the worst is the best way to keep everyone safe.
"This was certainly not a walk in the park, because we put the same preparation into it to make sure we were ready to respond but certainly we didn't have to respond in the way we had to last year," Wiggs said.
School is delayed two hours Tuesday as Westfield officials assess the town.
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