I was attending an executive board meeting at the Fire Communications Center in Laconia recently.  After the meeting, as the Tilton chief and I walked to our cars, we noticed that the sky was ink black with clouds moving in quickly. Both of our cell phones were announcing a weather alert. The chief stated that the storms would be spotty; I hoped that Andover would not be one of the spots.

As I returned to Andover our fire department was toned for trees and wires down.  Then another tone for a different location of trees and wires down. This continued for several more minutes with one tone after another. The on-scene reports were of Route 11 being closed and the possibility of closing Main Street.  It sounded like we were going to have a long night.
Main Street was, in fact, closed, but not by any clever decision made by the incident commander. Mother Nature made that call. Trees, telephone poles and wires covered Main Street from Proctor Academy to the Fire Station.  Fire teams worked alongside DOT crews to get Route 11 opened to traffic. This task was accomplished very quickly. Trees and poles were cut up and pushed out of the road way. The real clean up and power restoration would take longer. On Main Street, traffic was rerouted around North Street and this proved a challenge for large tractor trailer rigs, but they managed well.
As I looked at the large phone lines and tangle of power lines laying on Main Street, my fire chief mind was trying to figure how we would get all the resources we needed to fix everything.  However, before long a crew from NH COOP arrived with new poles and soon several more teams of power crews came with more poles and more bucket trucks. A little later a crew from the telephone company came and started planning the repairs.
About half the town was without power and, but for Main Street and Elbow Pond Road, all roads were passable.  It was now about 10 PM and progress was made. Most fire and EMS crews were sent home to rest. More storms were predicted.  Andover police were patrolling the town and the police chief and I had set up our commands at the fire station. We were both of the opinion that the town was okay and likely to stay that way. Though neither of us outright said it, neither of us was going home until our Main Street was open.
The chief and I watched the amazing teams of lineman as they replaced poles, installed cross arms and remounted the power lines.  Though I will admit, that at about 2 AM, I was nodding off… Wait, did I just hear our police chief say that we should cook hot dogs for the crews. He sure did!   Soon a grill came over from the Police Station, we set up tables with all the fixings that the Auxiliary had in the fire station kitchen. Some of the fire team went home and brought back several kinds of chips. The crews came over and had food and cold drinks.  The impromptu cookout was a great success. The crews did not stay with us long as they still had much to do.

The chief and I sat in front of the fire station and watched the sun rise to a new day. Not in our wildest dreams was that ever in our plans. However the night was interesting and at some points a bit of fun. Please don’t tell Joe I said that. At around 6 AM the crews finished and Main Street was open to traffic. When I see the Tilton Fire Chief again I will school him on the fury of “spotty” storms.
I am in awe of the teams that responded to our storm damage: New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, Next Gen, Comcast, DOT, Andover Road agent and Crew and the Andover Police, Fire and EMS.
On behalf of the Police Chief and I, please accept our thanks for an amazing effort.