Advertisement

Irene's Flooding, Outages Still Plaguing Mass.

Children stand on the far side of a flooded portion of Massachusetts Rt. 5 which was closed to traffic in Northhampton, Mass., Monday. (AP)
Children stand on the far side of a flooded portion of Massachusetts Rt. 5 which was closed to traffic in Northhampton, Mass., Monday. (AP)

Two days after Irene exited Massachusetts, 25 towns are still dealing with the flooding caused by its rains. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 customers remained without power.

[sidebar title="Related Links:" width="270" align="right"]

[/sidebar]State emergency management officials say that over 200,000 Massachusetts electric customers are still without power in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

National Grid had said earlier Tuesday that nearly 180,000 of its customers are still without power, with Brockton, Attleboro and Stoughton among the communities particularly hard hit.

NStar cut the number of its customers without power overnight by about half and was reporting 84,000 outages early Tuesday. The South Shore and Cape Cod are the hardest hit areas.

Western Massachusetts Electric Co. is reporting just scattered outages.

Officials have warned that it could take several days to get power back on for everyone.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said the communities still affected by flooding were in Berkshire, Franklin and Worcester counties, in the western and central Massachusetts.

MEMA director Kurt Schwartz said five communities had asked for temporary bridges to deal with threats from high waters. Meanwhile, the eastern half of Massachusetts didn't get as much rain, but was still recovering from high winds that downed trees and caused power outages.

There some signs of progress. The number of people using shelters dropped to 55 statewide overnight Monday. And the number of Massachusetts National Guard troops deployed fell from 2,500 during the storm to 1,800 on Tuesday.

More:

This program aired on August 30, 2011. The audio for this program is not available.

Advertisement

More from WBUR

Listen Live
Close