Hurricane Irene: What Do You Remember?

What were you doing when the hurricane swept through the area?

Chances are last year at this time, you were scrambling to get a generator, or calling relatives to see if the family could move over there for a bit. As with many other communities around, Shrewsbury and Grafton were slammed pretty hard, with half of Grafton's National Grid customers losing power and Shrewsbury's SELCO responding to outages for two days. Irene hit the edge of North Carolina on Aug. 27, 2011, as a Category 1 hurricane, according to this article in the Huffington Post. It was the first of its kind to hit land since Ike two years earlier, and most of the East Coast felt its effects, with 2.3 million under mandatory evacuation orders.  Patch MetroWest covered Irene through pictures, stories and a live blog that spanned for …

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Moms About Town

Waiting For Irene

Actually two hurricanes came through this weekend.

Saturday night, like many here in town, we battened down the hatches. We bought the water and batteries, found the flashlights and radio, stocked up on non-perishable foods, and cleared the yard of potential airborne detritus in anticipation of Hurricane Irene’s blustery blow-by. Little did we know that the real storm about to come through would be inside the house on this, the weekend before school starts. This past weekend, Hurricane Lorette came to town. She started developing significant pressure and gust about two weeks ago after so many weeks of summer vacation in small spaces. Vacation means a lot of family interaction. A lot. The pressure started to build with little microbursts here and there. Saturday night, Hurricane Lorette was…

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Selectmen Schedule Additional Curbside Pickup for Hurricane Debris

Next week, residents can put out brush for curbside collection.

Selectmen voted to add a yard waste pickup week to help resident cleanup from the Hurricane Irene. The curbside collection is scheduled for the week of Sept. 6 to Sept. 11, though that is Labor Day week, so the collection will start on Tuesday instead of Monday. Yard waste must be in the 30-gallon paper bags and lined up at the curb by 7 a.m. Brush will be picked up if it is no larger than 3 inches in diameter, cut into 4-foot lengths and securely tied into bundles. For any brush greater than 3 inches in diameter, homeowners should contact a tree removal contractor with the ability to chip brush on site. Homeowners within the Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) area also make sure that the contractor hired is ALB compliant. A list of ALB …

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Selectmen To Discuss Hurricane Irene Debris Removal

At 6 p.m. tonight, the selectmen will discuss coordinating removal of debris.

Not sure what to do with the debris from Hurricane Irene? The selectmen are meeting tonight at 6 p.m. at the town hall to coordinate efforts to help residents with removal. Stay with Shrewsbury Patch for the latest information.

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Viewfinder

IMAGE GALLERY: Residents Clean-Up After the Storm

After Hurricane Irene, the town was back to normal on Monday.

Despite huge wind gusts and rainy weather, Shrewsbury is almost back to normal. Some residenst went without power for a handful of hours, but today, they are all back online. "We had no power outage and no limbs down," said Jackie Baron of Colton Road. "All we've had to do today was pick up a few leaves and twigs." Paul Norris of Ireta Road said his family lost power for about two hours during the storm. "Our family read—it was light out, so we didn't need to use candles or a flashlight," he said. "The only damage is some limbs down from this tree in our front yard." Throughout town, some trees were still needing to be removed, and the town is planning to help with the debris pickup around town. More information will be available on …

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SELCO Crews and Firefighters Work the Storm

Thanks to the hardworking crews, many residents now have power.

Thanks to the latest technology, SELCO was able to use Twitter to keep residents informed of power outages in town and how soon they'd have power back. "Sometimes people call more than once and it's hard to keep track of new versus old calls," said Jackie Pratt, marketing and customer care manager for SELCO. "It was a way to keep people informed." Most of the power outages were resolved by 6 p.m. today. "The outages were spread throughout town," Pratt said. "We had crews working at 7:30 a.m. and there is still a lot to get to in town." Crimson and Hickory roads were the worst in town, according to Pratt. Boston Hill was affected as well as Westmont and the Spring and Prospect Street area. "there wasn't one area of town effected the most," …

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