Starting on Friday and lasting into Saturday, the Town sustained the effects of a major Nor’easter that from many accounts resembled a Category 2 Hurricane. The storm had torrential rains and wind gusts that were in the 70-80 mph range. Severe tree damage occurred all over town and widespread power outages occurred. At one point, 93% of the town’s households and businesses were without power. Crews from National Grid with subcontractors from as far away as New Jersey and Canada have worked around the clock to help restore power. As of the writing of this message, there still remains less than 5% of the Town’s residents and businesses that are without power, but I am informed by National Grid representatives that most, if not all of the Town should be fully restored by the end of the day.

At this time, I want to thank all of the members of our Public Safety, Public Works, Dispatch, Facilities, Schools and all of their support teams who have helped to assist our residents and businesses during this difficult time. I also want to thank the members of the Foxborough Volunteer Corp and the Boy Scouts of Troops 32 and 7 for assisting with the effort to open a Shelter over the weekend. I think the overall response of our team members was outstanding given the difficult conditions everyone was dealing with. With each of these events, we learn something new and we do everything to improve our response for the next event. However, this was a particularly difficult event with widespread tree and utility damage. Given the wide scope of issues associated with this event, the Town responded exceptionally well in virtually all phases. On behalf of the Town, I want to thank all of you who assisted in this effort. We still have some work to do and we are now planning the clean-up effort. However, we are tracking another major storm that could impact this area on Wednesday into Thursday. We are taking steps now to prepare for that and will do what we need to do to help keep this Town operating and keep our residents safe.

Finally, I want to thank our residents for their patience and understanding during this difficult event. Residents paid close attention to their neighbors, particularly the elderly and those with illnesses. That kind of caring and assistance from neighbors helping neighbors is an invaluable characteristic of a community that cares. For that, we are extremely grateful. Thanks again for everyone’s assistance and let’s try and get through this next event!

Sincerely,
Bill Keegan,
Town Manager