POWER UPDATE: Restoration Will Be Gradual

Many North Andover residents may have to wait until Thursday night for their power to be back on, but others may see it sooner.

Marcy Reed, president of National Grid in Massachusetts, said that the restoration process from now on will be gradual because now the process will involve clearing trees and repairing wires street-by-street.

"As of 1 p.m., power was restored to 102,000 customers, so this means we now have about 319,000 customers without power," Reed said. "It is our goal that we will have 200,000 [without power] by late tonight."

National Grid currently has more than 1,200 workers restoring power across the state. The company has called in crews from as far away as Texas, Virginia and Canada to help. Once those crews arrive, there will likely be more than 1,800 workers on the job.

"However, even with all the resources, it takes time to repair the damage caused by this storm," Reed said.

Reed pointed out that the major difference between this storm and the aftermath of Hurricane Irene -- in which hundreds of thousands lost power in New England -- is that after Irene, the bulk of outages were caused by transmission damage. That was easier to fix and made it possible to restore power to large numbers of customers at once. In this outage, the process has involved a variety of solutions. And although the company has been able to restore power to so many so far, the process from now on will be longer.

"The next large batches are mostly in the distribution restoration," Reed said, meaning clearing trees and fixing individual lines. "That takes longer, because it's street-by-street."

North Andover currently has about 4,000 homes without power after the weekend's massive storm. The largest area in North Andover without power is around Massachusetts Avenue -- stretching from Waverly Road to Dale Street and from Lake Cochichewick all the way to Route 114. Another large area without power is around Lake Cochichewick along Great Pond Road into Boxford.

"We know this is a difficult time, and we want to reassure them that we are working to get power restored as quickly and safely as possible," Reed said.

For those without power or heat, the has been set up as a shelter.