After Irene: When will the power come back on?

Cold showers. Meals in the dark. Refrigerators full of spoiled food. No TV. No Internet. Up and down the East Coast, patience is wearing thin among the nearly 1 million people still waiting for the electricity to come back on after Hurricane Irene knocked out the power last weekend.

 With the waters receding across much of the flood-stricken region, homeowners are mucking out their basements and dragging soggy furniture to the curb. But the wait for power drags on, with an estimated 895,000 homes and businesses still without electricity, down from a peak of 9.6 million. 

And criticism of the utility companies is mounting. In Rhode Island, a state senator is calling for an investigation, and Massachusetts’ attorney general is demanding information from utilities on how they are dealing with the crisis, including how many crews are in the field and their response time.

The industry has defended its efforts, noting it warned the public that a storm like Irene was bound to cause prolonged outages and pointing out that flooding and toppled trees caused severe damage to utility poles, substations and other equipment. Irene has been blamed for at least 46 deaths in 13 states. With the streets drying out in hard-hit New Jersey, some towns faced new problems, namely trash bins overflowing with waterlogged debris. In Vermont, with roads slowly reopening, the National Guard’s airlift of food, water and other supplies to once cut-off towns was winding down.

The White House declared a major disaster in Vermont, clearing the way for federal aid for repairs. The declaration, signed by President Barack Obama, makes individual assistance available for homeowners. Politicians have been inundated with complaints from people who say it is taking too long. Rhode Island state Sen. John J. Tassoni Jr. on Thursday called on the state Public Utilities Commission to investigate National Grid.

William Bryan, deputy assistant secretary of at the U.S. Energy Department, said it typically takes at least few days to restore power after a storm like Irene, and National Grid has done a great job. They ought to be commended for that. You are well ahead of the curve for restoration. Along the East Coast, deep exhaustion set in as work turned from pumping polluted floodwaters out of homes to keeping an eye out for looters, scavengers or more welcome visitors such as FEMA representatives and insurance adjusters.