Above: I just learned the personal impact that the blizzard had on some of our emergency personnel. (image from Facebook)
For most of us, there were no big incidents from yesterday’s storm. And it’s a given that blizzards are hard on our emergency personnel. But you may be surprised by how hard it was this time – especially for police officers.
A few officers suffered crushed cars. (Don’t worry, none were occupied.) There were also damaged cruisers.
In addition, police and fire stations lost power. Fortunately, the backup generator kept them going. That impact wasn’t felt by residents, since it didn’t interrupt their service to the town.
Here are the details from the Southborough Police Department on Facebook:
Tuesday’s blizzard brought heavy snow, wind, rain and white-out conditions throughout Southborough and the surrounding region. Although most of the town fared pretty well throughout the storm, the Police & Fire Stations were left without power due to a fallen tree. The tree crushed a few of our officer’s personal vehicles, and slightly damaged two police cruisers. The tree also brought down power lines and snapped a utility pole from across the parking lot. Both stations were without power for approximately 9 hours.
There were no interruptions of service to the town, as our officers were still able to respond to calls for service.
We want to thank the Facilities Department and National Grid crews, for their quick response and restoration of utilities to both buildings.
Click here to see their post with more images.
Thank you to both crews for always serving, no matter the conditions! And also a big thanks to the Public Works crew for their hard work. (And letting us get the kids off to school today, even if it was 2 hours late!)
Updated (3/16/17 1:58 pm) Though the Facebook post states they were without power for nine hours, Police Chief Kenneth Paulhus says the backup generator fired up immediately. So they were covered.
I assume that, in fact, neither facility lost power for long, both are served by large relatively new diesel generators which serve as back up power.
Beth said in the article they lost power for about nine hours….that seems like a long time to me. Did the backup generators not kick in for that long? Sad, if true.
Thanks to all our emergency personnel for keeping us safe and grateful they stayed safe as well!
Getting good questions on this post that I don’t have the answers to at this point. I shared what was on Facebook posted by Southborough Police Department.
I’ll have to follow up with them in order to get more detail.
I don’t do Facebook, so never know what is posted by anyone there…don’t do twitter, instagram, etc., etc. either….no time to keep up with all that. That is why i depend on mysouthborough.com :-) Grateful that Susan started this blog and that Beth took it over, otherwise, I would be sadly uninformed. Can’t rely on the paper to give the facts and not editorialize, either. Just want and need a place to find the facts and not opinions of the editors.
Unless a tree came down on the generator and was damaged?
Chief Pauhlus says the backup generator kicked in right away and there was no difference in power. So, the statement on Facebook seems misleading.
Still, the main point of the story still stands. Police personnel were dealt a blow by the tree that crushed their cars.