Storm takes down trees, power lines in New Hampshire

CANAAN, N.H. (WCAX) - Thousands of people across our region were still without power Wednesday in the wake of Tropical Storm Isaias. Several people were killed, including one woman in New Hampshire.

It was not the heavy rains from Isaias that caused the damage in New Hampshire, it was the high winds that toppled trees and brought down power lines across the region.

"The wind was whipping," said Nan Munsey of Canaan, New Hampshire.

Munsey got help from her neighbor cleaning up the branches scattered across her property.

"The wind always comes from the west, like it is now, but when it comes from the east, it takes things down," Munsey said.

Richard Karl lives a couple of towns over in Etna.

“BAM! Big clap of thunder, lights went off, came back on, started to surge, stove goes beep, beep, beep,” Karl said.

As it turns out, a fallen tree ripped the power lines and utility box right off the side of his house.

"We had a martini, that's the first thing," Karl said. "Then we called the police because we didn't know really who to call."

Enfield Police Chief Roy Holland is also the town's emergency management director.

"We had about six locations that had some heavy trees down," Holland said.

Line crews were out in force Wednesday working to turn the lights back on. Upward of 80,000 customers were in the dark at the height of the storm. In Enfield, a program set up after COVID-19 called Good Morning Enfield was used to touch base with that community’s vulnerable adults who might be affected by the outages.

"If they need food or if they need a ride to get someplace like a doctor's appointment or something along those lines," Holland explained. "It's a way for us to just check in so they are not forgotten."

Electricity was restored to more than half of all homes across the state by Wednesday afternoon. But it was clear by the broken trees lying across the roads that some of the fixes were going to take awhile.

Karl didn’t let the storm spoil his night.

"In fact, what was cooking in the oven was supposed to go another 20 minutes. We left it in there an hour; it was done," he said.

Munsey was only in the dark for a couple of hours, though, when we talked, she was still waiting for her phone and internet service to come back.

"We've had worse storms by far where we have lost power for many days," she said.

Line crews will be working around the clock to restore power to customers. Crews from neighboring states have been called in to help with that process.

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