Last week was a very long week for residents, public safety, town government and National Grid.  The timing of this storm was unfortunate.  Since many hardwood trees were still retaining their leaves, the wet snow added a tremendous amount of weight to the branches.  For many trees in town it was too much to bear and many split and fell.  As they fell they took wires and utility poles down with them.  The end result was a widespread power outage affecting over 80% of National Grid’s Billerica customers.  This power outage was so widespread that National Grid needed to mobilize hundreds of line crews from out of state to restore power.  In many cases this restoration process took many days.

During this outage BPD used CodeRED to call as many residents as possible.  We also kept our website updated with information as well as Twitter and Facebook.  Unfortunately, many people had no access to the internet or landlines during this incident due to the loss of electricity.  Those residents that had previously registered their cell phones with CodeRED were able to receive updates. During this incident we had 334 new CodeRED registrations which were approved immediately.  There were many residents that stayed connected through smartphones, their neighbors, local businesses and town facilities.  Even though communication was successful on many levels we do need to remind residents that CodeRED is a voluntary system and if you fail to register your number(s) you may not receive critical information during emergencies.  We do not add phone numbers to CodeRED automatically.  Please take the time to register your phone numbers.

During the time between October 29th and November 3rd the BPD communication center answered 365 911 calls and another 5503 business line calls.  Although the call volume was extreme, telecommunicators successfully handled them all.  The Police Department handled 612 calls for service during the same time period.

Billerica Police would like to thank all Billerica residents for their patience.  Also, Emergency Management and the Billerica Council on Aging for their support in opening and manning the warming center at the Billerica Senior Center.

We would like to encourage all Billerica residents to learn more about disaster preparedness by visiting Ready.gov.