South Shore: Utilities warning that widespread outages could persist for days

More than a quarter of a million electric customers in Massachusetts are still without power in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

Amy Zorich, spokesperson for National Grid, reported Tuesday morning that nearly 138,000 of its customers were still without power:

 ”That is still true, unfortunately. But we do have crews out there working round the clock getting customers back every hour, so we ask customers to be patient, bear with us and we understand their inconvenience, but we’re doing everything we can.”

We asked Zorich if National Grid has a priority list:

“Certainly public safety is going to be a priority– making sure we’re addressing any wires down that may be outstanding, getting to hospitals and those kinds of locations, but also for us we are trying to get our transmission systems back online.”

NStar cut the number of its customers without power overnight significantly with about 84,000 customers still without electricity.

NStar officials said the South Shore and Cape Cod were the hardest hit areas.

Officials from both NStar and National Grid warned that it could take several days to get power back on for everyone.