Stratford Power Outages Drop to 9.4 Percent

About 6,000 United Illuminating customers in Stratford have had their power restored since the utility Thursday vowed to reenergize 95 percent of its customers in the state by midnight Monday.

Still, as of 12:43 p.m. Saturday, about 2,200 customers in Stratford remained in the dark. That's 9.4 percent of the town.

"We are pushing UI with everything we have, and they have several crews in Stratford restoring power," read a post this afternoon on the Facebook page of Mayor John A. Harkins. "In the meantime, please call the Hurricane Sandy hotline (203) 385-4070 for information on places to get warm, charge your electronics, shower, etc."

United Illuminating, which serves 17 municipalities in Connecticut, announced today that it expects to have 15,000 to 20,000 customers restored on Saturday. Many of the services remaining to be restored are the single services that require intensive work, according to a press release the utility sent out today.

"Our crews have made significant progress yesterday evening and will continue to work around the clock until all customers are restored," James P. Torgerson, UI's chief executive officer, said in the release. "We continue to have crews dispersed all over the UI service territory working diligently to restore power."

In the release, UI reminds its customers to assume all downed, damaged or dangling power lines are live and dangerous, and avoid anything in which these power lines might be in contact, such as trees of fences.

United Illuminting can be reached at 800.7.CALL.UI. You can also follow the utility's restoration progress on Twitter and Facebook.