Utility companies prep for Hurricane Sandy

BOSTON (WHDH) -- Utility companies around Massachusetts worked to get ahead of Hurricane Sandy.

Crews were out Thursday trimming back tress trying to avoid some of the power problems seen in past nor’easters.

Utility companies said their preparations for Tuesday’s expected hurricane has been going on since last Halloween, when a big nor’easter knocked out power for many in New England.

The companies said they have been trimming trees since last year and are trimming them more aggressively than past years.

Trees were the problem last year, but companies said people were also upset by the lack of information of when their power would be restored. Utility companies said they have made changes to inform residents when power would come back on.

“We have better information sharing in place. We’ve also launched communication portals so that the community leaders have real-time access to our outage management systems. We also have an outage map that is brand new on our website, so customers can see exactly what their outage is and when the estimated restoration time is,” said NSTAR spokesperson Caroline Pretyman. “So it’s a lot about communication and information sharing that has really been improved in the past year.”