Line workers and other employees of The United Illuminating Company who worked during Hurricane Gloria received a unique memento in recognition of their successful efforts to restore electric service to 184,000 customers: a belt buckle.
It reads: “Sept. 27, 1985. Hurricane Gloria. United Illuminating.”
George Edwards had been on the job as president and CEO of The United Illuminating Company for less than six months when Hurricane Gloria roared ashore on Sept. 27, 1985.
This would be no baptism by fire; it would be baptism by 92-mph winds, fallen trees and darkness for 184,000 customers.
These were his company’s poles, wires and transformers being tossed around. These were his company’s customers without power. What would this new, 44-year-old CEO from Georgia do?
He picked up the phone.
Walter Booker didn’t even know where to start when he got his first look at the damage from Hurricane Gloria.
He’d worked his share of storms, having spent six years as a line worker, 1st class, at UI.
But Gloria was his first hurricane.
He and his colleagues were eager to do what they’d been trained to do. They’d waited out the Sept. 27, 1985 storm, stocking up trucks and readying equipment while Gloria raged outside. As the day wore on, the swirling bands of tropical wind and rain eventually yielded to the sort of crisp, sunny day that often follows a tempest.
It was a beautiful afternoon — if you could ignore the devastation.
On Sept. 25, 1985, Hurricane Gloria churned its way past the Caribbean and started its punishing trek up the Eastern seaboard.
At The United Illuminating Company, officials were growing concerned. Weather reports were coming in, but there was no official indication what track the storm was going to take as it approached New England. The Weather Channel and similar cable channels existed, but forecasting models were not as precise as they are today.
But there was one person UI could contact who would have an accurate forecast. And anyone who has lived in Connecticut during the past 30 years knows the name.
Annette Cyr knew it was getting real when she saw the roof blew off the building across the street.
Like everyone else at UI, Cyr had been anxiously expecting a major storm on Sept. 27, 1985, the day Hurricane Gloria arrived in Connecticut.
As a Customer Service representative working at UI’s then-headquarters on Temple Street in New Haven, she’d received special storm training and had been assigned to a 12-hour rotating shift schedule for the duration of the storm and recovery effort.
Her job was to take customer calls about downed lines, broken equipment, power outages and other problems. From each customer report, she’d create a “trouble order,” and forward it to the Dispatch department so crews could be assigned to make repairs.
The coffee was fresh at the Metro Diner in Stratford and the conversation drifted back 30 years, to a storm unlike any the UI retirees had ever experienced.
“It was the most damage I had ever seen,” said Joe Zorpette, a field engineer who retired in 1997. “We went out and everything was gone. The poles were just gone. We needed maps to see where the poles were.”
Hurricane Gloria was a first for many Connecticut residents.
It had been more than a dozen years since the last major tropical system crossed the state’s shores — and that storm, Agnes, had already weakened into a tropical storm by the time it reached Connecticut in June 1972.
Pipes and Poles 