WARWICK, R.I. — With Hurricane Irene’s floodwaters receding across much of the East Coast, homeowners are mucking out their basements and dragging soggy furniture to the curb. But frustrations are rising as the wait for power drags on, with an estimated 895,000 homes and businesses still without electricity.
Cold showers. The stench of spoiled food. No Internet. No TV. Too few distractions. Patience is wearing thin among the hundreds of thousands of people — down from a peak of 9.6 million — still waiting for the electricity to come back on after last weekend’s storm.
“It’s like ‘Little House on the Prairie’ times,” said Debbie McWeeney, who went to a Red Cross shelter in Warwick to pick up food and water after everything in her refrigerator went bad. “Except I’m not enjoying it at all.”
And criticism of the utility companies is mounting.
In Rhode Island, a state senator is calling for an investigation, and a Massachusetts lawmaker plans to file legislation next week that would require utilities to rebate customers two days of service for every one day they are without power.