A Message from First Selectman Bindelglass (Update 8/7/2020 morning)

View message.

Good morning,

We have been dealing with COVID-19 for what seems like an eternity and yet this week we have had to deal with still more hardship from Tropical Storm Isaias. It turned out to be an amazingly damaging storm. I sat in my office in Town Hall through the entire storm thinking to myself this was no big deal. Then, the calls started to come in. I have since been all over town with Ed Nagy, Director of Public Works and our Public Works crews as well as with Chief Doyle, our Emergency Management Director. The level of devastation is massive. In a mere two hours dozens of large trees were uprooted or snapped in half with a number of telephone poles damaged as well. The effects to our power grid disrupted power to all of Easton.

So many of the down trees blocking our roads were wrapped in power lines thus the United Illuminating Co. needed to be present for much of the tree work working together with Easton’s DPW. For most of the last two days we have had two UI crews all day and one at night and our guys clearing roads. Restoration of power began on Wednesday night and will accelerate from here. If all goes well almost all of our roads will be passable by tonight.  UI tells us that most of the power will be back by Saturday and all of it by Monday night. I am certain that is not soon enough for anyone. I sympathize with all of our citizens and the tremendous hardship and inconvenience to all.  We have enlisted the support of State Representative Anne Hughes, State Senator Tony Hwang, and Congressman Jim Himes to push UI to move faster. They were all very helpful. Chief Doyle and Ed Nagy have been in constant communication with UI liaisons as well. The responsiveness of utilities in restoring service in this state after any storm has been a longstanding problem. The Governor’s Office is again investigating their actions. I can tell you that I have met a number of the UI folks working in town and all have been dedicated and professional as well as hard working.

Town Hall is open this morning and we will try to conduct business as usual. Not to be forgotten, we continue to work on school reopening plans. All of the responsibility for the schools now falls on the shoulders of Acting Superintendent Stephanie Pierson-Ugol. This is an incredible burden and we thank her for her efforts and leadership.

Lastly, it is August when many perhaps had vacation plans. These plans may take you to states where the COVID-19 virus is not controlled. This puts our families at risk for making the trip and our community at risk for bringing the virus home. The purpose of the quarantine at home for 14 days is to mitigate these risks and the quarantine should be strictly adhered to. This should really serve as a deterrent to one’s choosing to travel to these states. That is the safest way to protect your family and our town.

As First Selectman, I thank you for your patience as we deal with the storm damage and all the inconvenience which it caused. There will be other storms in the future no doubt, and I will make every effort to continue to improve our responsiveness.

Be well and be safe.

Dave Bindelglass