Frantic morning for state officials

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and top state emergency officials didn’t get much sleep overnight, as Hurricane Irene slammed into the Northeast with heavy rain and winds that resulted in power outages for half a million customers.

The governor spent Saturday night in the Emergency Operations Center in the state armory next to the Capitol complex in Hartford, taking reports on conditions from throughout the state and following the track of the storm.

Early Sunday he returned to the Governor’s Residence in the North End of the city and took three or four hours of sleep.

When he returned to the operations center at 6 a.m. Sunday and saw rainfall levels of at least an inch per hour on the saturated ground, along with the rising wind speeds as the meat of the storm bared down on Connecticut, he ordered the closure of the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways starting at 7 a.m.

There were two actions taken, said James Redeker, commissioner of Transportation, during a Sunday morning phone interview.  There was the truck ban on the interstates because of wind speed that was subsequently lifted and on the Merritt there were conditions for flooding and trees down.

With the natural tree canopy and a long history of falling trees that caused fatalities, it was an easy call to make, Redeker said, adding that at least 20 incidents of flooding and fallen trees were collected before the order for the 7 a.m. parkway closure.

If we didn’t take an action to close it, it effectively closed itself, Redeker said, adding that DOT crews were out continually investigating road conditions and clearing downed trees.

During most of the day on Saturday, Malloy and his advisers in the Office of Emergency Management coordinated local town and city reactions along the coast, determining the type of assistance they might need, reviewing evacuation plans and discussing changes in conditions of the slow-moving hurricane, which finally became a tropical storm when some of its energy was dissipated.

With half a million customers without power by late Sunday morning already surpassed the outages caused by Hurricane Gloria back in 1985.

And with high tides along the coast just starting, with the promise of more high winds of up to 60 miles per hour, from the back half of the storm, Malloy and his team knew the hurricane’s wrath was a long way from being finished.