Thousands Of Mass. Customers Still Without Power

The number of Massachusetts homes and businesses without power after Tropical Storm Irene has been dropping steadily, but about 43,000 customers are still in the dark.

Utility crews continue to work around the clock, but customers without power and some lawmakers are questioning how well power companies prepared for and responded to Irene. More than 500,000 outages were reported after the storm hit Sunday.

Norfolk Republican state Rep. Daniel Winslow says the response by utilities and their communication with customers has been "unacceptable" in the wake of Irene. He plans to file legislation requiring utilities to rebate customers two days of service for every one day they are without power.

The state's largest utility companies, National Grid and NStar, say they are making repairs as quickly as possible and laid out emergency response plans before the storm.