PLAINFIELD — Prospect Street, Hallockville Road and Gloyd Street all remain closed in Plainfield as cleanup continues following a devastating wind storm that swept the hilltowns Monday on the heels of a snow and ice storm, but roads in Cummington have been opened. At least 101 customers in Plainfield remained without power, as well as 71 in Cummington, as of 4 p.m. Tuesday.

This is a marked improvement from Monday, when Eversource reported estimates that power was out for 327 of their 396 customers in Plainfield, in addition to 487 of 579 Cummington customers. Parts of Chesterfield have been impacted as well.

It was unclear when power will return, Eversource spokeswoman Priscilla Ress said late Tuesday afternoon. Customers are given an “ETR” or “estimated time of restoration” that can be viewed from Eversource’s outage map at https://outagemap.eversource.com, which is updated as crews are assigned to repairs.

Ress said crews are working “as hard and as quickly and as safely as possible.” Work to be done, she said, includes removing damaged poles, transporting new ones to the site and installing them, followed by a process of reattaching wires and rebuilding the tops of poles.

Crews were dealing with rough terrain and continuing to fight against winds, which slows the process, but she assured customers that crews are working 16-hour shifts to reconnect homes and businesses with electricity.

Crews worked overnight into Tuesday morning to get power back following Monday’s destruction, which downed power lines and left many in these towns powerless for more than 24 hours — the worst storm to rock the area since 2008, according to multiple local officials. Over Sunday night into Monday morning, Plainfield Assistant Fire Chief Matt Hardwick clocked wind speeds at 65 mph at Plainfield’s public safety complex, a battering that resulted in the downing of countless trees, bringing power lines down with them.

Asked for a ballpark number of trees that have gone down, Cummington Police Chief Michael Perkins said Tuesday morning that “I wouldn’t even begin to speculate. A lot. The debris, it’s just everywhere.

“In terms of power and damage, I would say this is the worst storm since 2008 — the ice storm … that one shut down the whole town,” he said. That storm wreaked havoc in several communities in Hampshire County.

In Plainfield, West, Prospect and Gloyd streets, and dirt sections of North Union Street were hit particularly hard, with several of them remaining closed.

Route 9 in Cummington was closed from early morning Monday until midnight, with Dodwells and Nash roads being hit especially hard. All roads in Cummington are now open.

Residents: ‘It’s New England’

Despite the conditions, no one in the community was reported injured or missing, and only a handful of residents reached out to police and fire departments in the two towns seeking assistance. Most of these calls were to ask whether roads were navigable.

Temperatures reached a low of 13 degrees Monday night, but Perkins called residents of the communities “pretty self-reliant” and “resilient,” and said the majority of residents were prepared with backup heating, whether with propane, wood stoves or generators.

He took a single call with a resident complaining about the cold, who ended up staying with a neighbor. In Plainfield, there was also a single resident who the Fire Department picked up, who spent the evening in the town’s public safety complex before her power was back on in the morning.

Red Fulton, who lives on hard-hit Dodwells Road, said late Tuesday morning that it is usually “two or three days without power when it goes down.”

Fulton, an employee at the Swift River recovery center, wasn’t too bothered that he was stuck at his house by downed trees and wires.

His road, he said, “was blocked on both locations. You couldn’t get into work because the trees, the power lines were down … But hey, it’s New England, what — are you gonna move?” he said.

Norm Beckwith, who lives on Prospect Street in Plainfield, was in the same boat as Fulton. Unable to leave his driveway and with his power still out, he spent Tuesday morning helping a neighbor and watching the work being done by crews on the street.

Thanks to his generator, he said, “Everything’s plugged in. I got heat in the house and heat in the garage.”

Plainfield resident Joe Houston was even less impacted, saying his power hadn’t been off for more than an hour.

Perkins said the damage could have been immeasurably worse if Eversource wasn’t continuously “proactive” in trimming trees, and he said the trees along Route 9, mostly pine trees, caused the bulk of damage.

Hilltown residents are miles from resources once storms set in, Perkins noted.

“People make fun of the memes you see on social media about getting bread and milk and that kind of stuff. But you know what, out here, that stuff really needs to be done, because there’s not a lot,” he said.

“For a resident to get gas, it’s 13 miles in either direction, to either Friendly Fred’s Package Store in Windsor or Cumberland Farms in Williamsburg,” he said.

Perkins praised town workers, including the highway department, that pulled together with Eversource for the recovery effort.

“They really, over the past couple days, have been out straight from Sunday until now,” said Perkins.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.