Power Still Out For Many in Town

The chaos from Hurricane Irene still lingers for some in town.

According to National Grid, 166 customers in North Andover are still without power. The system runs on feeders, and the largest impacted feeder --  which provides power to 125 homes in the Massachusetts Avenue area and was supposed to be fixed first -- is still not fixed. Several other outages are reported scattered around town. National Grid did not give an estimated time of restoration for any of them.

To make matters more complicated, Emergency Management Director Jeff Coco said that he is seeing a completely different scenario in town -- average of two new calls per hour today about compromised power lines.

"As of the course of the day so far, we have about 16 more issues we have to address," Coco said.

He added that it's been a struggle seeking information about power outages from National Grid.

"It's been like pulling teeth getting information," he said, noting that the company's outage map doesn't match reality in town. "The data is very confusing. Nobody can give you a straight answer as to what the numbers are."

Coco said he would travel around town and observe restoration efforts himself rather than rely on National Grid reports alone.