Gov. Malloy Tours Enfield Emergency Shelter

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy spent about 30 minutes in Enfield Wednesday afternoon, touring the emergency shelter at John F. Kennedy Middle School.

The governor talked with numerous residents at the shelter, some of whom have been staying there since the Oct. 29 Nor'easter that still has more than 13,000 Enfield homes without power.

"People are amazingly resilient, understanding and well-spirited considering the circumstances," Malloy said. "They are very grateful for their fellow citizens volunteering. It's really quite uplifting."

Questioned by Enfield Patch as to his specific impression of the Enfield shelter, Malloy responded, "It blows you away how good they are, how strong they are, how many volunteers there are, how responsive they are to the care they're getting from their fellow citizens."

The middle school shelter is virtually full, prompting the opening of a second shelter location at Enfield High School.

A humorous moment during the governor's visit came when he approached a young man with a guitar and asked him to play something. The man, Cameron Sutphin, immediately began playing and singing an old Johnny Paycheck number, "Take This Job and Shove It."

Malloy's visit was marred by a brief confrontation with a utility union official. 

"Staffing would not have solved this, there wouldn't have been enough people to deal with a catastrophe like this," said Richard Sank, business manager of the Connecticut Electrical Workers Union, IBEW Local 457. "There's no doubt people are understaffed - more people in each center would certainly help. CL&P can't even deal with a regular thunderstorm, let alone something like this. This was no surprise, they forecast this, everybody knew it was coming. Obviously Mr. (Jeffrey) Butler (CL&P president) or Malloy didn't watch the same channels."

"For somebody to appear at a center where people are being cared for to make that kind of argument, and I asked him questions he couldn't answer - I think appropriate benchmarking is the way to do it, not to have discourse in a center like this," Malloy said.