At five thirty on Sunday morning August 28th, winds from Tropical Storm Irene caused several limbs to brake off a Tulip poplar tree which landed on powerlines and snapped the utility pole in half as if it were a toothpick.  This pole was located across the street from my house.

Thus began a seven day saga of anger, frustration and resignation as over 700,000 thousand homes in Connecticut were separated from the electrical grid. About 98 percent of those homes got reconnected before mine did.

The problem with my power outage was pretty simple. Replace the pole, mount a new transformer, reset the lines on the pole, reconnect the service from the pole to the homes , and reenergize the line and return the 54 homes in my neighborhood  to the grid.

So why did it take 7 days, 11 hours and 34 minutes? Was our neighborhood unaccessible by flood waters? Were a forest of trees strewn across the road making access to the outage impossible? Was the utility unaware of the downed line? No, no, and no.

When you turn onto our road there is a sign that says NO OUTLET. During the week we were without power, I joked the sign was a warning that there was no electrical outlet in our neighborhood. While there are several streets that run off our road, it is in effect a three and half mile long DEAD END.

By Sunday afternoon, the rains had moved north and east wreaking havoc on upstate New York and Vermont. Monday dawned sunny and beautiful and while most of Connecticut was affected by the outage, it seemed like it would be only a matter of hours before a couple of line trucks would come out and we would get our power pack.

As my late grandmother liked to say, "You should be so lucky!" I tried to work from home and also spend time cleaning up the debris in my backyard, which took most of the affternoon.

My wife and I rode around town so we could charge our cell phones, the only communication we had with the outside world. Many businesses were still without power and we began to see that the magnitude of the storm and its aftermath was greater than we imagined.

Neither of us got much sleep the next several nights. In fact, the stress began to build when we realized it would be days and not hours before we got our power back. I went to work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and experienced a sense of hopelessness I had never experienced before.

Every small issue seemed magnified, and those who had not lost power, or had regained it quickly seemed to sweep aside, the inconvenience and impact it had those still without power.

Occasionally, a utility truck would drive by, but there was no commitment as to when we the pole would be replaced. In fact, by Wednesday, the power companies in Connecticut, were still "assessing" the damage and wouldn't commit to any times for restoration for its customers.

Two things were obvious to me. There didn't seem to be enough crews, and we were at the end of a very long line of customers waiting to be served.

Late Wednesday the power company started posting vehicles near the pole acting as "protection" against someone touching the downed lines. They sat idle (in my humble opinion) around the clock. Everytime a resident drove by they were asked when we would be getting repaired. Each of the utility company employees did their very best Sergeant Schutlz imitation of "I know nothing," and by Friday morning, my neighbors started getting really nasty.

I walked down my driveway and spoke to the utility employee and apologized for the nastiness of my neighbors. This guy obviously has nothing to do with dispatching repair crews and makes no high level decisions, so directing my ire towards him was waste of his and my time.

So I asked some questions and he said I should call the Mayor, the Governor, and the power company for action.

The Governor had the whole state to worry about, so I scratched that option, but I did call the power company and the Mayor's office.  

I was able to find the utility company website on my smartphone, and saw that it was part of a holding company that owned other utilities. Eschewing the customer service lines as a colossal waste of time and effort, I found the number for the holding company, dialed and asked for the executive offices. My call was immediately answered by Bernice, who confirmed I had reached the office of the CEO. I had reached the right place.

I outlined my problem and recognized that she was powerless to dispatch a repair crew to my home, but I did stress that it seemed foolish to have utility staff guarding a dead powerline, and asked that some high level executive call me back after this was over so I could offer some feedback. She took my name an number, thanked me for my call, wished me luck and hung up. I thought I'll never hear back from them and moved on to my call to the Mayor.

One would think the telephone number of the Mayor's office would be prominently displayed on the Town website. It isn't. Since I was born before the digital age, I let my fingers do the walking in the yellow pages, found the number, and dialed.

The next voice I heard was that of a supercilious nit wit. No, not the Mayor, but his Executive Assistant, Mr. Ricky Williams. I asked to be put through, he belligerently asked what this is in reference to. I said, I am a constituent, please put me through. He got nasty and demanded to know what the call was about. I explained it was about my neighborhood being without power, and I was interrupted as he explained, that neighborhoods X, Y, and Z were also without and in effect "get over it."

I then asked for his name and rank, and was rewarded. I got a bit under the collar and he put me on low priority hold. While I cooled off I just wanted to leave my name and number and when he returned I did just that. I added that I am sure that if my call was about a campaign contribution the Mayor would have had me put through. I suggested to  Mr. Williams, who described himself to me as a customer service professional, return for Empathy training, as he had missed the course when it was first offered.

While I was on the call the phone had beeped indicating an incoming call. When checking voicemail, I found that the Chief Operating Office of the electrical company had returned my call and he left me his return number. Interesting, very interesting. I called, and he answered.

For the next 30 minutes we had a very frank and open discussion. He was defensive at first, but since I used words that had more than four letters, that passed. He gave me some interesting perspective on the company's plans to have 98 percent of all customers power restored over the weekend. He said, "By any standard, that is a remarkable accomplishment, but I recognize from your perspective it's not enough."

Our conversation took another tack when I asked about trimming branches from tree limbs, something that occurs with frequency in other states that have severe weather and fewer outages, and none at the magnitude of this one.

He explained the state and municipalities regulated what utilities could cut, and those limitation do have an impact from preventing the types of outages caused by this storm. He said our call did prompt him to consider holding town meetings in communities served by the utility to explain the process for preparing for the storm, the resources called in to help, and thought it would be a good forum to get customer input.

He has looked at the situation in my neighborhood, and thought it would be Sunday before power was restored. I ended the call feel informed for the first time, and that someone, listened, empathized and was open to feedback. I felt less frustrated.

Satuday morning looked like we might get a break, but a replacement pole was not yet delivered. Sunday morning came and almost went when at 11 o'clock a group of five and three trucks showed up and start the six hour job of restoring power. My driveway became the gathering point for the dozens of neighbors who stopped and watched the pole was replaced and power was restored. When the line was charged, and lights came back on  I felt like a weight was lifted and life was good again.

I'm still waiting for a call from the Mayor.