Hurricane Sandy rattles The Berkshires

While power outages left many in the dark, The Berkshires fared far better than much of the northeast during Hurricane Sandy.

All the public schools and many offices were closed both Monday and Tuesday as emergency crews responded to the storm.

Rainfall varied widely in The Berkshires and was generally under one inch, but the wind was the real issue.

Massachusetts’ utilities have crews, some from out-of-state, in the area to restore power. In the peak of the outages overnight Monday, close to 10,000 Berkshire County residents had no power. These outages included every town in the county. By Wednesday morning just over 2,000 customers were still without power in the county.

Wind gusts of up to 60 mph from Hurricane Sandy toppled trees and took down power lines, leading to the outages.

The cleanup came fast, as towns and power company crews covered The Berkshires on Tuesday to reopen roads and clean up debris.

Damage to Cranwell

Hurricane Sandy also claimed the roof of the Founders Hall building at Cranwell Resort and Spa.

“The roof blew off…Founders Hall from the wind. There were no injuries or anything like that,” said Lenox Fire Chief Dan Clifford in comments to The Beacon.

The fire department got a call about the incident around 6:28 p.m. Monday.

Founders Hall’s 30-by-75-foot torched roof blew off. Underneath the torched roof was an old gravel and stone roof, which prevented widespread water damage, although some water did get into the structure.

About 12 of the rooms of Founders Hall were occupied when the torched roof blew off, although none of the guests were harmed by the incident.

“All those people were relocated to rooms within the Cranwell Resort,” said Chief Clifford.

He estimated the damage to Founders Hall to be around $40,000, although Cranwell Resort’s management said they had not yet been given a number.

Carl Pratt, general manager of the Cranwell Resort, told The Beacon the damage wasn’t serious and was being swiftly repaired.

“I expect it [the repair] to be completed by the end of this week,” he said.

Mr. Pratt also emphasized Cranwell was still open and fully functional, and the damage to Founders Hall would lead to no issues for guests.

“We’re in full operation without any interruptions to our guests,” said Mr. Pratt.

NYC devastated

The unprecedented surge from Sandy’s flood waters took a bite out of the core of the Big Apple’s infrastructure, knocking out power to a large swath of the city and crippling the subway system used daily by more than 4 million people.

Much of the city is still in the dark as they begin to clean up after the storm, which caused 10 confirmed deaths.

On Tuesday, one estimate from IHS Global Insight put total costs at somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion, including $20 billion in infrastructure damages.

Hurricane Irene, which struck the Northeast last season and caused more damage locally, cost about $13 billion in economic damages, according to data compiled by Moody’s Analytics.

Posted by Kameron Z. Spaulding on October 29, 2012. Filed under Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry