The first responsibility in a major storm is for the power company to restore electricity to hospitals, police stations and other vital public services. At the same time, we must be certain that all real and potential hazards to the public, such as snapped or leaning utility poles, uprooted trees on the electric lines or fallen wires, are cleared.

Before we can restore service to your street, we must repair damaged substations, main electric lines and wires that feed power to streets such as yours. Next, we repair any downed or damaged wires between utility poles and individual homes.

Proper installation will prevent a house fire and avoid electricity feeding back into our lines, which endangers the lives of workers making repairs.

If you buy a generator, you may need a town permit or official inspection for it. Also, make sure a licensed electrician installs it.

The generator must be connected to your home's wiring through a special transfer switch to be sure electricity produced by the generator does not back- feed into our electric lines.

Exhaust from a portable generator contains carbon monoxide, which can be deadly.

Never use a generator indoors or in enclosed spaces, such as garages, basements or porches.

Always run the generator outdoors as far from the house as possible, and away from doors, windows and air-intake vents.

You may be on one circuit and your neighbor down the street on another. A home generally has different circuits for different parts of the house. When a fuse blows or a circuit breaker trips, it is possible for one room to have lights and the other room to be dark. The same concept may hold true for the power lines serving your neighborhood.

Power outage numbers may increase during the storm restoration period in some areas for several reasons:

As the power company patrols lines, it may discover outages that weren’t reported earlier.

As more calls come into the power company customer service representatives, the outage reporting system gives more refined numbers.

Branches that may have broken during the storm may come loose and fall onto lines causing additional outages.

Depending on time of day, etc., customers may be at work or away from their homes and unaware of power outages to report, until they discover them upon return to their homes later in the storm restoration period.

Power outage numbers may decrease suddenly if large circuits that had been taken out of service by a storm are brought back into service.

Treat all wires — even those that are hanging or downed — as if they are "live" (energized). Don’t assume they are "dead" (de-energized). Customers can report any downed or hanging wires to the power company or their police or fire departments.

Upon receiving a report from a customer or a fire or police department about downed burning or live wires, we dispatch an employee to stand by the scene, warning others away until we have an opportunity to dispatch a crew to the scene to disconnect or isolate the wire from its electrical source. Customers should be advised to stay clear of all downed and hanging wires and not assume that they are de-energized.

In many storms, CL&P uses a patrol effort in strategic areas to plan a restoration process. These patrols also look for downed wires.

Our power lines carry high voltages; therefore, they always are placed on the top of the poles with telephone and cable lines below. If a tree or limb falls, it will almost always hit the electrical wires first, which causes a short circuit on the line. Also, telephone wires are normally very thick and much stronger than the wire used to conduct electricity, making them more resistant to falling trees or limbs.