Above: One of the two trees that fell on Tillinghast Road, bringing with them a main power line.

Trash pickup is delayed one day

Town of EG DPW truck on Frenchtown Road, transporting a truckful of tree debris.

Late Saturday night and early Sunday, it was looking like Rhode Island was going to bear the brunt of the Tropical Storm  Henri but by mid morning, it shifted, skirting Block Island and making landfall in southeastern Connecticut. Still East Greenwich did not escape unscathed.

By Sunday afternoon, the intermittent sound of gas-fueled generators could be heard, particularly on the west side of town. An area of Frenchtown Road at High Hawk and Tillinghast between Frenchtown and Pardon’s Wood were the sites of the largest power outages. On Frenchtown a transformer blew and on Tillinghast two trees fell, bringing with them the power line. But that appeared to be the worst of the damage from Tropical Storm Henri. 

The Frenchtown outage – which took place at 10:43 a.m. Sunday – left 722 customers without power, according to the National Grid outage map (HERE), making it by far the largest outage. By Sunday night, power was back on in the area.

Meanwhile, on Tillinghast, two large trees next to each other on the east side of the street fell westward, downing the entire power line. While town DPW workers have been able to clean up some downed trees and limbs caused by the storm, because these trees brought down the power line, the trees cannot be removed until the power has been turned off. This outage affected 53 customers, according to the outage map.

There are 85 customers without power in the Dalehill–Blueberry Hill area between Howland Drive and Cedar Avenue. Other outages affect five or fewer customers. 

Sunday night, there was also a power outage in the Post Road vicinity, stretching as far as Cole Middle School to the Hunt River, affecting 493 customers, and two outages in the Cindy Ann Drive area.

“At this point we should feel good about the minimal overall impact,” said Town Manager Andy Nota Sunday evening. “The things we’re still monitoring and chasing are all power related –  street lights at a key intersections, schools, and other key facilities as we head into the morning.” 

He added, “We’ll be performing cleanup around town for the week along with residents and landscaping crews. We will be touching up some of the main streets with some added street sweeping over the next few weeks as we are still in August and have lots of good weather ahead.”

Trees down on Tillinghast after Tropical Storm Henri.

Trees down on Tillinghast after Tropical Storm Henri.

Frenchtown power line with a transformer neighbors believe was the one that blew Sunday morning.