After The Storm, Officials Encourage Patience, Public Transportation

As a snow emergency lifted in Boston Thursday, emergency measures remain in place for now in other cities and towns across the state. Spokesmen from a state agency and a utility company joined Morning Edition Thursday to provide updates on cleanup efforts and power outages.

Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, gave a roundup of the situation.

"We have to be very patient and careful as we go to work this morning. It's not going to be business as usual, but I think it's going to be pretty close to business as usual," Judge said. "And we still always encourage folks if they can take public transportation for one more day, it's going to help everybody."

National Grid officials say power should be returned to all its customers by Thursday night, if not sooner. Company spokesman David Graves provided an update on their progress so far.

Graves said the challenge is that many outages are individual homes and businesses where the direct service line, from a poll to a building for example, has been taken down.

"This becomes very much a labor intensive process, where it's really slogging through from one account to another to get those customers back up," Graves said.

Earlier: