Hurricane Knocks Down Wires, Trees

Hurricane Sandy left several hundred thousand people in Massachusetts without electricity at various points on Monday, and winds from the storm knocked down countless wires and trees locally.

Throughout Monday, Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light kept customers apprised of its storm response via its Facebook page.  Outages were reported in a number of different parts of town and the department also provided notes on when work crews were dispatched.

As noted in an announcement on the town website, report electrical outages to the municipal light department at 781-246-6363.

A check-in with the Wakefield Police on Monday afternoon found numerous reports of trees, wires and limbs down all over town. Lietenant Craig Calabrese reported that the volume of service calls to the department started to especially pick up around 3 p.m., which is when the storm was still a couple of hours away from making landfall in New Jersey.

On Monday evening, the National Grid website was not reporting outages in Lynnfield, nor in Wakefield. However, nearby communities such as Saugus, Melrose and Malden were among those reporting scattered outages affecting thousands of people at a time.

Further down Route 128, utility company NStar was reporting outages affecting several hundred customers in Stoneham and more than 4,300 in neighboring Woburn.

Note: Thanks to Marion Jones for posting this photo from the storm on Wakefield Patch. .