Wyman: Municipalities Had it Tough Following October Snowstorm

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman went from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3, 2011 without power in her Tolland home as a result of the October Nor'easter. Her kids, who also live in Tolland, didn't get power back until Nov. 6.

Between her personal experience, addressing the power outage and storm damage situation at the state level, and visiting affected towns, particularly in the Farmington Valley, Wyman saw the impact of local government firsthand.

"It's just really tough to live like that," Wyman told Patch after her keynote speech at the Avon Democratic Town Committee meeting Wednesday in Town Hall. "We were able to stay in the house a couple of nights. We were fine. But the people who needed help, who had young kids or children, or elderly, we need to get to them fast. We learned a lot."

Wyman was at a in Simsbury earlier on Wednesday about preparing for the next storm, following the Monday release of from the state-initiated .

"And that's why the two-storm report is good," Wyman told Patch. "It had 60 some-odd recommendations. The governor's putting more recommendations forward now. The people of Connecticut deserve better. We believe that if this happens again, we're going to be better prepared."

Wyman visited Avon the Saturday after the storm, spending a lot of time in the town's emergency shelter at Avon High School. Statewide, she saw issues from elderly citizens needing oxygen tanks to people short of medications for conditions like diabetes. Medicines became stocked in shelters.

"We know now that we need to have oxygen delivered to all towns," Wyman added, "making sure that all towns had oxygen in the shelter."

Another need the state identified was having hospital beds available in shelters for the elderly who could not sleep on cots.

She also noted that Avon residents cut trees so their neighbors could get out.

"People helping people were unbelieveable throughout," Wyman said. "Avon was one of those towns that really set up a wonderful place and had a good system going to protecting it and bringing people together. People, even though it was a bad situation, were there and were happy to be there because people were around taking care of them."

She encouraged the Democratic Town Committee and other registered Democrats to get involved at the local level, whether government officials or not.

Wyman began public service in 1979 when controversial Tolland school district leadership choices led her to try to "impeach the Board of Ed," including a situation where, she said, the board re-hired a superintendent without doing so publicly. She was an X-ray technician at the time and when she discovered one cannot "impeach" an entire school board, she ran for office.

But once she was on the Board of Education, where she ended up serving eight years, she went the first few months without receiving any calls from her supporters about ideas and concerns. Wyman told the Democrats in the audience that she called every one of them, discovering they were not talking to her because, as a school board member, she was now "one of them."

That is a line Wyman does not believe should exist, and she encouraged the public to visit her in Hartford.

"You might not like what the governor and I say," Wyman said, also referencing the budget process, "but what you are going to know is that we're honest about it."

Wyman said that municipal officials had it tough dealing with the snowstorm aftermath.

"We need people that are on the ground working hard," Wyman said. "....Even though we serve on the Board of Ed or we serve on the Town Council or we serve on the town committee, we've got to get involved in the day-to-day, not just at election time."