Nantucket Cleans Up

Big snowdrifts, scattered power outages linger as challenges for island resort

Don Van Dyke has owned a home on Nantucket's North Beach Street for over three decades, and the devastation wrought by the blizzard named Juno astonishes him.

"It looks like a disaster zone -- I"ve never seen it that bad," Van Dyke said Thursday afternoon as he awaited efforts by Verizon Communications crews to replace tilted and toppled telephone poles so National Grid could repair the electric wires and get power flowing again to his house and several others. "It's 32 degrees in our house, everything all cocooned up with the snow all over it," Van Dyke said.

Nantucket didn't see huge snowfall -- about 12 inches on most of the island -- but it did experience ferocious winds, gusting to over 70 m.p.h. and blowing at a steady 50 m.p.h. for 24 straight hours late Monday night through Tuesday. At one point Tuesday, close to 100 percent of the island's 12,800 customers had lost power, a number that was cut back to about 300 by Thursday morning.

At Madaket Marine on the west end of the island, chief operating officer Chris Shannon showed how they survived a two-foot tidal flood pouring over the docks and into their shops. They've learned from hard experience to store equipment and merchandise up on blocks, and all 180 shrink-wrapped power boats stored there came through the storm unscathed.

As a welcome sun melted back snowbanks and utility crews enjoyed a calm and nearly windless day to attack their work, Van Dyke said, "When you think about all the damage that's been done, it's scary ... But this too shall pass. Right now, it's a good day, and things are starting to improve, and that's all to the good." 

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