MANCHESTER, NH – The Vogel brothers from Illinois have never been to New Hampshire, until now.
But as storm chasers for Eversource, they are among the hundreds of contractors who made their way here to restore power for the nearly 200,000 electric customers left without power over the past 24 hours. They’ve been working around the clock.
Tuesday night, they had a chance to relax and eat a hot meal at CJs Great West Grill with a dozen others who were on the job.
The calm before the next storm.
They know that the forecast for Wednesday – more snow – means they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Yesterday was bad,” says Ryan Vogel, who spent Monday removing fallen tree branches from wires and bringing neighborhoods in Mont Vernon back online along with his brother, Jason Vogel. They were joined by Sean Demerman, also of Illinois, and Dylan Williams, of Missouri.
“It can be exiting,” Ryan Vogel said of life as a contractor, which means never knowing where you’ll be dispatched to next.
According to Eversource, crews have restored power to 217,000 customers since the storm began, and have cleared 212 blocked roads and set 42 broken poles. Many of them were here from surrounding states, Canada and the midwest, like the Vogels.
More than a dozen big white bucket trucks were parked outside the eatery on South Willow Street. Inside the guys, many of them still wearing their fluorescent-yellow sweatshirts were chowing down on hot wings and cold beer.
“There are a lot more of us on the way,” Ryan Vogel said.
