Thousands mark eighth day in dark in Norhteast

HARTFORD, Conn. – Tens of thousands in the chilly Northeast remained without power Sunday, eight days after a rare October snowstorm knocked much of the region into the dark.

Many spent another day without lights or heat, lingering at shopping malls, hitting the movies or bunking at friends’ homes as they faced the possibility of another day without power.

The storm, which hit Oct. 29 and 30, hammered the Northeast and cut electricity to more than 3 million homes and businesses throughout the region. Many communities postponed trick-or-treating for youngsters.

At a news conference Sunday night in hardest-hit Connecticut, the state’s largest utility announced that it wouldn’t meet its goal of restoring power to 99 percent of its 1.2 million customers.

Jeffrey Butler, chief operating officer for Connecticut Light & Power, apologized, saying that about 88,000 customers still remained without electricity and that it would probably be Wednesday before everyone had power restored. About 6,000 of the outages were new and unrelated to the freak October snowstorm that cut power to 800,000 Connecticut residents, he said.

New Jersey and Massachusetts each had a few hundred customers still waiting for the lights to come back on, and utilities there expected to have power restored by midnight.