Blizzard Cleanup Could Take Weeks

The hum of generators that was so ubiquitous last week has been replaced by the whine of chainsaws, as cleanup continues following the Blizzard of ‘26.

 Snowfall totals varied widely by neighborhood, with some areas reporting around two feet of snow, and parts of Chatham receiving barely six inches of wet, slushy accumulation. Winds gusted well above hurricane force at a number of Lower Cape locations. At its peak, the storm caused the majority of customers — some 153,000 — to lose power on Cape Cod, with some towns completely without service. A robust response from Eversource meant that most properties were back on line by Friday evening.

 But that still translated to several days and nights in the dark and cold for many Lower Cape residents. Warming centers opened in each town saw strong attendance, though they provided only limited service and only during the daytime. Barnstable County officials opened Nauset Regional High School in North Eastham as a regional shelter, providing meals, overnight sleeping spaces, limited medical service and accommodations for pets, but the facility was unexpectedly closed because of a problem with the heating system.

 Ultimately, the county opened the Cape Tech school in Harwich and Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School as regional shelters, and while officials did not have specific occupancy numbers Tuesday, they appeared to be very well utilized.

 “The Lower Cape communities experienced a greater impact from power outages compared to some other parts of the region,” Barnstable County Communications Manager Sonja Sheasley said. “This resulted in increased demand for warming and sheltering support and a longer duration of response activity in those towns.”

Sheasley said that, regionally, coordination between the towns and partner agencies was strong, with effective communications. But there is room for improvement.

 “This event reinforced the importance of continuing to strengthen and expand our volunteer base to support extended shelter operations and sustained response efforts,” she said.

 School was in session again Monday after a week-long closure from the storm that doubled students’ winter vacations. In the Monomoy district, the 180-day school year is now extended through Friday, June 26, which is likely to complicate some families’ plans for travel or summer camp, “and we will work to accommodate these needs,” Superintendent Scott Carpenter said. “Some have asked if we'd take days from April Vacation week. The short answer is no. Many families have made vacation plans for April Vacation. It would also be challenging for staff who live outside of Chatham and Harwich and have children in other school districts to have Monomoy in session during April Vacation while their own children are on vacation,” he said. 

 In his 33 years as an educator, “this was my first with an entire week lost to a storm,” Carpenter said.

 In Brewster, Town Manager Peter Lombardi said the full damage assessment will take some time, but “with the exception of extensive tree damage, Brewster fared relatively well in terms of the impacts of the storm and its aftermath on town facilities.

 “We expect cleanup activities will take the DPW, natural resources, and other departments a couple months to complete this spring once the weather turns,” he said. There were minor water leaks from burst pipes at the Eddy School and Brewster Ladies’ Library that were quickly fixed, but the most extensive damage was to the 600 feet of sturdy fence at First Light Beach at the former Sea Camps Bay Property. 

 “Between the sea ice and blizzard, it is almost entirely destroyed,” Lombardi said. A contractor will be cleaning up the debris this week. “In addition, there is significant erosion of the coastal dune behind where the sturdy fence had been located,” he said. “Over the next month or so, we will evaluate near- and long-term solutions to address this issue.”

The warming center at town hall welcomed nearly 300 residents who came to thaw out and charge devices, Lombardi reported.

The town manager thanked staff including Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Kevin Varley, DPW Director Alex Provos, DPW Foreman Jimmy Jones, Police Chief Heath Eldredge, “our entire local emergency planning committee, CERT volunteers, and all our public works employees and first responders, along with countless others, who stepped up for the Brewster community last week.”

The recycling center will waive the fee for any storm debris disposal through Sunday, March 15. 

 Two fishing boats washed ashore during the storm, with Harbormaster Jason Holm saying the boats’ moorings were no match for the high winds.

 There was a building fire in town related to the blizzard, with crews called to the house at 41 Edgewood Circle just after 3 p.m. on Feb. 25 for a chimney fire. The property had no power, “so they were using the fireplace to heat the home, kind of around the clock,” Tavano said. The blaze caused significant smoke damage but little fire damage and working smoke detectors were in place. “Fortunately, they got alerted to it fairly quickly,” he said. 

There were also a large number of calls for carbon monoxide, with most of the reports linked to the use of generators during the power outage.

While the town has begun the process of working through lessons learned during the storm, “from a response standpoint, I think everything went really well,” the fire chief said. There was strong coordination at the town’s emergency operations center, which handled more than 300 inquiries from the public about where to warm up, get hot meals or stay overnight. Doing so reduced the very high volume of calls that had to be handled by police and fire dispatchers, he noted. The decision to open the personal care site at the community center early in the storm was a good one, Tavano noted. An additional warming center at the middle school was also well utilized.

After receiving complaints that residents of The Anchorage on Crowell Road were suffering in the cold, Tavano visited the site and found no urgent problems, with indoor temperatures in the 60s. The town provided a bus to bring interested residents to a regional shelter, but no residents took advantage of the service, he said.

Tavano praised town staff and partners like the Family Table Collaborative, which provided food for all the shelters and warming centers throughout the week. “We’re talking thousands of meals they were pushing out daily,” he said.

The select board plans to conduct a post-storm analysis in the near future.

The Chatham transfer station will accept storm debris from residents, fee-free, though Sunday, April 5.

Storm damage to Harwich town facilities was limited, but the tree damage was breathtaking, DPW Director Lincoln Hooper said.

 “I would say that this is the worst storm I've experienced in 35 years in the department, absent the tornado response,” he said. The cleanup from that 2019 twister cost $1.2 million and took three weeks, even despite strong assistance from the state. “This doesn’t come anywhere near that level, but I have never seen so many downed lines in a snowstorm,” Hooper said.

Trees and utility poles were no match for the heavy, sticky snow with winds gusting up to 80 mph. “That’s hurricane force winds with all the extra weight of the snow and ice,” he said. 

Town departments coordinated well, and also worked well with county officials and utilities, Hooper said. “I really have to give Eversource kudos. I thought their response was the best I've ever seen.” The sheer number of downed wires was daunting. “I thought this was going to be a week or more before we had the roads open,” but most roads were opened by the end of the day Wednesday, with power back by Friday, he said. 

The town continues to accept brush and storm debris at the transfer station, though normal fees apply.

In Orleans, Public Works Director Rich Waldo said he expects it will take weeks to clean up the damage left behind by last week’s storm. At the storm’s peak, between 30 and 40 roads were closed off throughout town, he said. About 18 of those roads have been cleared and reopened, but he said another dozen or so remain blocked by downed trees wrapped in wires.

 “I’ve definitely dealt with my fair share of storms and high winds throughout my career, I would say,” Waldo said. “But this one particularly, the extent of just debris, has just been incredible.”

Large storms typically leave certain areas of town with more damage than others, Waldo said. But the damage caused last week was evenly spread across town, he noted. While the Lower Cape got less snow accumulation than other areas — about eight to 10 inches in Orleans, Waldo estimated — the heaviness of the snowfall wreaked havoc on utilities and equipment, including some DPW vehicles that were damaged by debris.

Looking ahead, Waldo said DPW crews have already begun the process of cutting up debris and transporting it to the town transfer station. He encouraged residents to similarly bring debris from their properties to the transfer station, where he said the fee for discarding debris will be waived through March 10.

 “Overall that just helps the whole system get back to normal,” he said.

The day after the storm on Feb. 24, a meeting was held with Waldo, Fire Chief Geof Deering and the select board in which the board declared a state of emergency for the town.

The storm left nearly all properties in town without power late into the week, including the town’s water and wastewater treatment facilities. But despite the challenges, Deering, the town’s emergency operations manager, applauded the collaboration between police, fire, public works and Eversource in managing the blizzard.

 “In this situation, the quote is ‘The difficult we do immediately and the impossible takes just a little bit longer.’ And that’s what’s going on here, and I’m really, really grateful for the cooperation,” he said.