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Lamont On Henri: ‘It’s Better To Be Overprepared Than Underprepared’

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NOAA.gov Photo

This image from The National Weather Service shows Tropical Storm Henri hitting Westerly, Rhode Island at 12:15 p.m. Sunday

ANSONIA-DERBY-SEYMOUR — Ex-hurricane Henri’s change of direction late Saturday night spared the lower Naugatuck Valley any serious impact from the storm, at least as of 6 p.m. Sunday.

It rained for most of Sunday, with some heavy rain forecasted overnight into Monday. With so much rain, downed trees and branches that interrupt the delivery of electricity will still be an issue through Monday.

“It was better to be over-prepared than under-prepared,” Gov. Ned Lamont said during a press conference at 6 p.m. Sunday.

The Change

For most of Saturday (Aug. 21) Henri was expected to make landfall near the City of New Haven.

However, a public advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center at 11 p.m. Saturday predicted the storm would move north, toward Rhode Island.

Henri was then downgraded to a tropical storm at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Henri ended up making landfall in Westerly, Rhode Island at 12:15 p.m. Sunday. Rhode Island ended up with the major power outages that had been predicted earlier for Connecticut.

“Look, the storm did us a bit of a favor — it did Rhode Island no favors — by veering a little bit more to the north,” Lamont said. “We’ve got down to 28,000 outages and they’re still close to 70,000.”

Hurry Up And Wait . . . And Wait . . . And . . .

Ansonia, Derby and Seymour saw steady rain all day Sunday — but really nothing out of the ordinary in terms of downed wires, power outages, or accidents as of 6 p.m. Sunday.

The towns — including public works, police, fire, EMS, and the various emergency managers — were all at the ready from Saturday night on, just in case.

But the major impacts predicted early Saturday never materialized, thanks to Henri’s jaunt to the northeast.

By late Sunday afternoon (4 p.m. or so), most of the Connecticut news stations had returned to regular programming, with the exception of FOX 61.

“The weather has lost all credibility,” a random person interviewed in the field on FOX 61 said.

As of 6 p.m. Sunday, Eversource reported no power outages in Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, Oxford or Seymour. United Illuminating reported no power outages in Derby. One UI customer was out in Shelton, and one was out in Ansonia.

That could change Sunday night into Monday, of course.

Click here for the Eversource outage map.

Click here for the United Illuminating outage map.

As of 5 p.m. Sunday, Henri had weakened, with winds of 40 mph. It was about 20 miles southeast of Hartford and heading northwest.

“On the forecast track, Henri is expected to slow down further and possibly stall near the Connecticut-New York border tonight, then move across northern Connecticut or southern Massachusetts by Monday afternoon,” according to the 5 p.m. public advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

Earlier Sunday

Click here for live interview The Valley Indy conducted with Derby Fire Department Chief David Lenart at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Click here for seven hours (11:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m.) of nothing but rain live-streamed from Hawthorne Avenue in Derby.

As of 1 p.m. Sunday, Henri’s impact on the lower Naugatuck Valley was next to nothing.

At that point in the day Eversource reported “less than two” customers in Seymour were without power. The issue in Seymour was quickly addressed, as a 2 p.m. list from Eversource showed no customers without power. Zero were out in Beacon Falls and Oxford.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, United Illuminating reported just 24 customers without power in Trumbull and North Branford. No customers were without power as of 2 p.m. in Ansonia, Derby, or Shelton.

Calls for service to Valley fire and EMS services were routine as of 2 p.m.

Henri’s landfall at 12:15 p.m. in Westerly, Rhode Island (not far from the Connecticut border) left 75,000 people without electricity in Rhode Island, according to information conveyed by Gov. Ned Lamont at a 1 p.m. press conference. On the Connecticut side of the border, including the towns around Stonington, 24,000 people were without power. On the bright side, Lamont said there were double the usual number of restoration crews on the scene in Connecticut.

The National Weather Service released impressive satellite imagery showing Henri hitting land. It is embedded in a Tweet below.

Lamont said four nursing homes in Connecticut were evacuated. Those facilities were in Mystic, West Haven, Saybrook and Guilford.

The storm was heading northwest, Lamont advised at 1 p.m.

Seymour First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis Sunday afternoon noted the forecasts predicting six inches of rain were for areas outside the lower Naugatuck Valley, thanks to Henri’s shift to the northeast Saturday into Sunday.

Derby Mayor Rich Dziekan released a document Sunday dated Saturday which declared a state of emergency in the city. It’s a formality that can qualify for the city to be reimbursed for storm-related costs.

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