- Weymouth High School was turned into an emergency shelter on Wednesday night
- Much of the South Shore is completely without power
- Extensive power restoration is expected Thursday
- Schools in communities mostly without power are closed Thursday
The South Shore is slowly cleaning up from a nor'easter that brought hurricane-force gusts, rippedroofs off buildings, toppledtrees and tookout power lines.
As of press time Thursday afternoon, much of the South Shore remained without power, including all of Cohasset, Pembroke and Scituate, 99% of Norwell, 96% percent of Abington, 97% of Plympton and 84% of Marshfield, according to state data.
Crews have beenbrought in from Canada and New Hampshire to help restore power and dozens of utility trucks could be seen staging Thursday.
See:The state's power failure maps
The largest communities on the South Shore are mostly back up and running. Although Quincy was hit hard by the storm –part of the O'Brien Towers apartment building roof was blown off –only 9% of customers, about 4,350, were without power as of Thursday afternoon. Restoration was estimated for midnight.
Braintree residents were mostly spared;the town runs its own light plant. Weymouth still had54% of its customers,14,353, without power as of Thursday afternoon.
More:Hingham power reports "unprecedented" outage from nor'easter
Hull, which relies on an antiquatedtransmission line that runs from Weymouth, only experienced isolated power failures and the transmission lines were spared.
In Hingham, which has its own light plant, most people didn't experiencemajor power failures. Those on the Norwell grid,fewer than 100 customers, were completely without power.
Eversource restored power to more than 178,000 customers overnight Wednesday, but company spokesman Chris McKinnon said the restoration effort will be a multi-day event.
“We are really ramping up our response now that the winds have started to come down. You will see more than 1,000 of our crews out there working around the clock over the next day or two days,"McKinnon toldWCVB, The Patriot Ledger's reporting partner."We are hoping we can get as much people online as quickly and as safely as possible."
A National Grid spokesman said power to most of its customers isexpected to be restored by Saturday, but for some the failures could last into next week.
Scituate resident Richard Dwyer was getting coffee at the Scituate Senior Center on Thursday because he had no power at home.
"The wind sounded like a freight train," he said.
Irene Murray is also without power, and said the senior center is a "life saver." She was able to charge her cellphone and laptop before headingbackto her house.
Her neighborBea Green saidWednesday night's wind was the worst she and her husband had ever heard after 40 years in Scituate.
Don Green, Bea's husband, said he was almost knocked over by wind when trying to get out of his car and ended up sitting in the driveway for two hours waiting for it to calm down.
All three residents said it would be a different situation if the power failedfor so long in the dead of winter, but, for now, the circ*mstances aren't so bad.
Gas stations across the region have been flooded with customers for two days as people fill up cars and gas-powered generators.Scituate service station owner Dave Wessman usually opens at 6 a.m., but opened at 5:30 a.m. Thursday and was pumping gas nonstop for hours.
Steve Shannon, of Scituate, said he drove as far as Abington on Thursday looking for gas before getting in line at Wessman's station, a Sunoco on Route 3A. He filled up cans to power his own generator and that of two neighbors.
The Regional Old Colony Communications Center in Duxbury– whichserves Duxbury, Plympton, Halifax, Rochester, Hanson and Hanover – fielded more than 1,000 calls during the storm, the centersaid on Twitter.
The Duxbury Fire Department set up a charging station in the lobby of its fire station, which also has internet access, spokesman Rob Reardon said on Twitter.
Gov. Charlie Baker visited Scituate on Wednesday and said it will be days before power is restored statewide.
Baker:It will take days to restore power following nor'easter Wednesday
In a storm advisory posted Wednesday night, Scituate officials said crews were working to repair the main transmission lines that serve the South Shore, followed by the main feeder lines.
"Realistically, residential neighborhoods will not start seeing significant restoration until Friday, continuing into the weekend," they said.
Scituate experienced wind gusts of 87 to 93 mph. Eight boats broke from their moorings. Four of them are more than 40 feet long.
Ferry service in Hingham wassuspended Thursday as the MBTA repairedthe Hingham dock. A modified ferry service was runningonly out of Hullafter a boat slammed into and damaged the dock.
Weymouth High School was turned into a regionalemergency shelter, Weymouth Emergency Management Director John Mulveyhill said.
The shelter will either be closed or moved so Weymouth can resume school Friday.
Mulveyhill said much of the town is without power, which means traffic lights are out.
"It's downed poles, downed wires and downed trees," he said Thursday. "We're expecting a lot of restoration today."
Hull Emergency Response Coordinator Craig Wolfe, who also volunteers for the Red Cross, said the shelter was serving people discharged from South Shore Hospital on Wednesday night, including people who use oxygen tanks and need power to maintain their oxygen supply.
"It was not a crazy amount of people," he said.
School closures
Schools across the South Shore are closed as of Thursday morning. Closed schools include:
- Abington
- Carver
- Duxbury
- East Bridgewater
- Granite Academy in Braintree
- Halifax
- Hanover
- Hingham
- Holbrook
- Kingston
- Marshfield
- Norwell
- Pembroke
- Plymouth
- Plympton
- Randolph
- Rockland
- Scituate
- South Shore Charter
- Stoughton
- Weymouth
- Whitman-Hanson
- Hull schools are on a two-hour delay.
Although most of Quincy has electricity, the Bernazzani and Snug Harbor elementary schools have none and school has been canceled there for Thursday, the school system said on Twitter.
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Material from WCVB, The Patriot Ledger's reporting partner, was used in this story. Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@patriotledger.com.
