WAWARSING – The severe winter storm which slammed the Northeast late last week left over 75,000 households without power — about a quarter of Central Hudson's service area — while simultaneously creating a beautiful, yet dangerous, vista of ice-encased trees and mountains throughout the Hudson Valley.

According to John Maserjian, a Central Hudson spokesperson, the Town of Wawarsing alone suffered 2,500 outages when the storm hit on Thursday night and into Friday morning. As of Monday, 60 homes were still without power in Wawarsing, he said.

"There really was not any area that remained unaffected by Thursday and Friday's storm," said Maserjian. "We've made some very, very good progress, but still, the areas that have been hardest hit require extensive repairs — very time consuming. Some areas, believe it or not, remained with ice through Sunday."

The cause of the outages were the aforementioned ice-covered trees, which became weighed down and subsequently tangled or snapped power lines. In some instances, the poles themselves broke, with Maserjian estimating that at least 60 Central Hudson poles had to be replaced as of Monday.

Monday also saw a thaw which he said would be beneficial to aid in clean-up efforts, but still posed a threat to restoring service throughout the region. "As ice drops off the trees and limbs, they may snap back into place, and in the process impact the power lines," said Maserjian.

He also reported that Central Hudson was able to obtain 17 utility crews from New Jersey and Southern New York who were still working into this week to help clear the roads and power lines of trees and branches.

Maserjian also said that, in Kerhonkson, dry ice was available to residents without power so they could keep their food cold.

Wawarsing Highway Superintendant Gil Davis reported that eight roads throughout the town had to be closed due to the storm. His crews worked throughout Thursday night and on into Friday clearing and cutting trees which had fallen, a task which proved to be even more difficult than usual because of the severity of the storm.

"It was so bad, I sent one crew to cut a tree down that had fallen across the road," said Davis. "They cut it up, turned around, and started to come back out, and three other trees had fallen behind them. They actually had to cut their way out — that's how fast the trees were going down in the middle of that storm. They could not keep up with them.

"I don't think you could be equipped for something that was that bad."

Davis said that he was documenting the damage done in the hopes of seeking federal aid to try and recoup some of the costs of the highway crew's overtime and cleanup costs, citing that Central Hudson had said that "the Ellenville and Wawarsing area was the second worst in Ulster County as far as damage."

Despite the difficulties the storm presented, there were little to no reported accidents or other traffic problems related to the storm. Davis chalked this up to the fact that the roads themselves remained relatively free of ice, and that the trees were the main problem that needed to be contended with.

"We dodged a bullet. It's bad, but we come out of this looking really good because this could've been really nasty," he said.

Chief Phil Mattracion of the Ellenville Police Department said that the village seemed to have come out of the storm unscathed, with no reported accidents or problems at all throughout the weekend.

"I don't think we had any weather-related call other than slippery roads, and the street department came out and salted those roads," he said.

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