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By David Fortier

The Eversource power outage map for the state is completely covered.

Following the dots that indicate outages, it’s easy to see the path the storm took–Connecticut, western Massachusetts, across southern New Hampshire, into a bit of Massachusetts and out to sea.

That tells one story. There are hundreds of thousands of others. Even when the outages are erased, many of those stories will continue. After that outline map clears up, those stories will not go away.

One from Bristol that you might be familiar with, or not:

A grandmother sits in her car with the air conditioning running, performing her daily breathing treatments–the breathing machine plugged into the AC adapter. It is 90 degrees and 70 percent humidity. Walking to the car under these circumstances is problematic. Walking back to her house is too.

It doesn’t take much to imagine what some others are doing to cope–all those depending on some medical devices. And be assured, there are people living close to you and me who are experiencing some of these difficulties.

Then there are the more typical issues associated with power outages. One is dealing with the heat. Two is witnessing freezers and refrigerators that have been off for days, their contents spoiling before your eyes.

And then there are those houses damaged from falling trees and high winds and the occupants, our neighbors, having to find a place to stay.

And of course, there is the specter, the phantom of Covid-19 hanging over us, too.

If you haven’t been affected personally, it might be easy to ignore what is happening around us.

Eversource estimates that it will take up to nine days for power to be restored.