Community Corner

Hurricane Irene Short Takes

Notes From an Eventful Week in Ledyard

Dunkin Donuts Was Port In The Storm

Glenwoods resident Shirley Gregson is a regular at the Dunkin Donuts on Route 12 in Gales Ferry. On a normal day, she likes to sit and enjoy her coffee over the morning newspaper.

These have not been normal days. The morning after the storm struck, she said, her tidy little coffee spot was mobbed with people. It has continued to do a brisk business all week.

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For some reason known only to Mother Nature and the power company, Dunkin Donuts in Gales Ferry never went dark. “There’s been nothing else open except for right in this little plaza here,” said Jim Cotello, who manages 12 Dunkin Donuts shops in the region. “It’s been pretty crazy.”

For a region left without electricity and water, that meant there would still be hot coffee in the morning. “We never lost power, and the Shell station across the street never lost power,” said Assistant Manager David Salls. He said McDonald’s never lost power, either.

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But McDonald’s closed early the night before the storm and did not open the next day. That decision left Dunkin Donuts the only port in the storm for local residents who rely on coffee to start their day.

They’ve since been running 24 hours, which has been great for Gregson, who still had no power at her home on Wednesday. 

Fortunately, her Glenwoods neighbors have been helping out. Several of them are tied into public water service, and have been bringing her bottles of water. “My table is covered with bottles of water,” she said.

 

Ledyard PD Hit With Communications Glitch

For about a full day after the storm, the Ledyard Police Department experienced a near-communications blackout. The trouble began the morning after the hurricane, when a voltage regulator on an emergency generator failed.

“It could have gone at any time,” said Ledyard Police Lt. Michael Finkelstein. “Unfortunately, it just happened to choose one of the worst possible times to fail.”

With no electricity, the police station on Lorenz Industrial Parkway had no phone and no Internet. Residents who called the main number (464-6400) would get a system message saying their call could not be completed as dialed, although Ledyard police could be reached by an alternate number (464-8225).

The department still was connected to the 911 emergency dispatch system, but the decision was made to transfer that function to the Mashantucket Pequot dispatch center, just to be on the safe side, Finkelstein said. “We sent one of our dispatchers to Mashantucket to provide for some continuity.”

By Tuesday morning the generator was operational again and the 911 emergency system was transferred back to Ledyard. 

“There are no guarantees with communications ever,” Finkelstein said, who emphasized that the 911 emergency system never went down. “That's why we have redundancies,” he said.

All things considered, he said, the town fared extremely well during and after the storm. "There was definitely some property damage, but no injuries." he said.

He added that when the police department makes its yearly requests for items such as radios and generators, “those are not luxury items. We really need those things.”

 

‘Woodman Spare That Tree…”

Rhonda Dutra lives at 7 Hermitage Drive. Last fall, she and her husband, Jay, got quotes to remove a large oak tree from their front yard. “We have a pool in the back and we just felt it was too much shade,” she said. 

But three or four different companies that came out to look at the tree all told the Dutras it was a beautiful, healthy old tree and they shouldn’t touch it.

And that’s where it stood until 7 a.m. Sunday morning. “We didn’t see it, but we heard it,” said Dutra, who works for the Southeastern Connecticut Regional VNA. “And we came and looked out the window, and it was like slow-motion watching the wires slowly come down.”

Dutral said they had moved their 5-year-old daughter the night before from her bedroom in the front of the house to another room on the back side, just in case. “And that’s where the tree would have hit if it had fallen the other way,” she said.

But the tree fell away from the house, into the wires. It was still hanging there Wednesday morning when crews came to remove it. Dutra was outside with her camera, taking pictures of their old oak before heading off to her mother’s house in Rhode Island to take a shower.


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