"We seemed to have dodged the large ice accumulation, which was our biggest fear," Malloy said during a midday press conference at the Emergency Operations Center this afternoon.
There were about 10,000 power outages reported altogether by Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating, but that number could have been 800,000 if more than half an inch of ice had accumulated, Malloy said.
The weight of snow on roofs continues to be a concern, and Malloy urged residents and business owners to clear their roofs. However, most collapses have occurred on commercial properties.
At the midday press conference, Malloy said he was lifting restrictions on tandem trailer traffic on all state highways at 2 p.m., earlier than expected.
"We're down to pretty good pavement," Malloy said.
Malloy has said Connecticut will far exceed financial thresholds for federal aid.
On Wednesday, the White House press office announced that personnel with the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been deployed to Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and several other states affected by the severe weather in the Northeast and the Midwest.
Building or roof collapses have been reported in Bethany, Milford and Waterbury. Malloy said, that although no injuries had been reported, in Waterbury, at least, the building had been occupied by homeless people in the past, and responders found a shopping cart outside.
Officials were searching through all three buildings to make sure no one had been hurt.
Other building and roofs collapses have been reported in Enfield, Middletown and Cromwell.
Middletown police are evacuating buildings on Main Street in the area of Washington and Liberty streets due to a partial building collapse at 505 Main St.
"We are evacuating all the buildings in the area because bricks shot across the street; so they are concerned about the integrity of surrounding buildings," Lt. Heather Desmond said.
Desmond said there were no injuries in the collapse, and two people were able to get out of the commercial building unharmed. The building contains a few shops. The area will likely be closed to traffic all day, so drivers should avoid the area.
Desmond said the building contained only businesses and no residential space.
The storm, which began early Wednesday morning with snow before switching to sleet and freezing rain, exited the state around noon. The next concern, Malloy said, is wind.
"There are buildings that are heavily laden. If you start shaking them a little bit, it could be a problem," he said.
Roads across the state were slick, but no major problems on the major arteries have been reported at this time.
The Department of Transportation has reported flooding on I-95 between Exits 46 and 45 in New Haven. Officials with the Department of Transportation said rain is melting snow, is clogging up drains and is causing problems.
DOT officials said crews will spend much of the day unplugging drains in the I-95 area.
State police said troopers responded to 1,700 calls for service for spinouts, fender benders and other minor incidents between 5 a.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
In an interview in her state Capitol office at 7 a.m., Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman said it has been highly fortunate that, despite treacherous travel conditions, there have been relatively few injuries in any of the storms of the past several weeks. She credited the work of the Department of Transportation plow drivers and the state police, among others.
"You've got to be proud of DOT,'' Wyman said. "It's been amazing teamwork'' among agencies.
Wyman advised drivers to slow down on the highways. She noted that cars zoomed past her large sport utility vehicle, driven by a trooper, on I-84 this morning. In an odd twist, she noted that she looked out the window at the state Capitol during the snowstorm on Tuesday and saw a man riding a bicycle.
All flight departures and arrivals at Bradley International Airport have been cancelled, although the airport is still open.
Metro North train services will be operating on a regular weekday schedule, although New Haven line customers can expect 15 minute delays due to overcrowding and weather related equipment issues.
Amtrak spokesman Clifford Cole said there are no significant delays in New England today as a result of the storm.
Connecticut Transit bus service resumed at 5:15 a.m., but customers are advised to expect weather related delays throughout the day
A partial roof collapse was reported at Windsor High School. Classes there are canceled today, as they are at many districts across the state.
In Wethersfield, a garage collapsed at 8 Barrington Drive. No one was injuried.
One of the biggest dangers if ice accumulates is power outages, and the National Weather Service on Tuesday night was warning that ice accumulations on power lines could cause outages today.
But Connecticut Light & Power spokesman Mitch Gross said the company is not expecting large numbers of outages.
More than 200 CL&P and contractor line and tree crews are at work, restoring power to CL&P customers affected by outages, he said.
"We have been working closely with state officials to coordinate our efforts since the first of the storms came through yesterday," said Al Roy, CL&P's manager of emergency management. "We have a team of employees who are communicating with officials in the towns affected by the storm."
CL&P is encouraging customers to keep up with weather forecasts, to report power outages by calling CL&P at 800-286-2000, or 860-947-2000 in the Hartford/Meriden area, and to report fallen wires by calling 9-1-1.
Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra said City Hall will open at noon today. He asked all non-essential city employees not to report for work until then.
In a live interview on Fox CT, Segarra said, "We have been working on the streets all night. ... The precipitation, at least in Hartford, was a lot less than we anticipated. I think we'll be in shape.''
He added that the city is working to remove some of the snow that has accumulated from previous storms. Even on heavily traveled streets, such as Asylum Avenue, the snow is still piled up in the travel lanes and is not cleared from curb to curb.
At times during the storms, the street has not been completely cleared in front of the various non-profit agencies along Asylum, including HARC and the Salvation Army, as employees try to reach nearby office towers at companies such as The Hartford.
"The governor sent out plows to help the city,'' Wyman said, adding that the state plows cleared areas near the entrances and exits of the major highways in Hartford. "The main roads should be plowed, and they're not totally done.''
The state's voluntary ban on tandem trailers went into effect at midnight, as crews from the state Department of Transportation worked to clear the roads from Tuesday's snowfall and prepare for Wednesday's main event.
As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, Bradley International Airport had measured 5.3 inches of snow in Windsor Locks, making this winter the ninth-snowiest on record with 76.5 inches. The court system announced that it would open at 10 a.m., he said, and the State Bond Commission meeting, already postponed once because of the weather, was postponed again.
The 4:30 a.m. conference call Wednesday included Malloy, Wyman, Department of Administrative Services commissioner Donald DeFronzo, acting public safety commissioner Skip Thomas, and Commissioner Jeffrey Parker of the state DOT, among others.
Malloy said this morning that one of his largest concerns is roof collapses.
"We are worried about that, and we did ask people to clear roofs to the extent that they could,'' Malloy said.
"We really are just waiting to see how much ice [will fall], and where we're going to get icy conditions,'' Malloy said in the television interview. "That's what we're watching at the moment.''
With the early arrival of the Syracuse University basketball team, the game between UConn and Syracuse is still slated for the XL Center in downtown Hartford at 7 p.m.
Connecticut won't be suffering alone during the bad weather. Wednesday's storm will affect most of the country, stretching 2,000 miles from Texas, through the Midwest and Great Lakes, into the Northeast. Thirty-three states were under some type of winter weather advisory, including the travel hub of Chicago.
Courant staff writers Christopher Keating, Jon Lender, Shawn Beals, Melissa Traynor, Steven Goode and Hillary Federico contributed to this story.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter