Blackout REPORT CARD is here.

The marks are in, in the Our Greenwich.com “Blackout Report Card.” The readers of OurGreenwich.com were asked to grade the performance of the key players in the recent multi-day power outage. (Obviously, this is a unscientific survey with a limited sample size.)

The highest marks were given to the Greenwich Police (“GPD”) and GEMS (Greenwich Emergency Medical Services) – both with “A+.” Close behind were the Fire Department and the Board of Education, both with A’s. There were only two B’s (both “B-” actually) Greenwich Post (independent weekly) and Verizon/AT&T.

On the low end, the poorest performer was, as one would expect, CL&P with a D. Only slightly higher, with D+, were the Greenwich Citizen (weekly owned by Greenwich Time), local radio station WGCH and the cable-service restoration performance of Cablevision. (Cablevision’s local news station, News 12, got a better grade (C) than the parent company.)

In the C+ column were Town DPW (Department of Public Works) & the Town Tree Department, and the First Selectman’s Office.  Interestingly, 55% of those who answered, rated the First Selectman’s Office either “Excellent” (41%) or “Good” (14%), but the other 45% resulted in an average grade of “C+.”  The Greenwich Time (daily), the Governor’s Office, the Town Emergency Management Coordinator’s Office, and the Town Sewer Department (along with News 12, as mentioned earlier) got grades of C or “Satisfactory.”

According to the survey, about a third of the respondents got their power back on Wednesday and about 15% never lost power. Surprisingly, nearly a quarter of those who responded didn’t get power back until Thursday or Friday. (The last house to get power got it yesterday, 9 days after the failure.)

Twenty percent of the respondents said their roads and travel routes were never closed. A third of those who answered report their roads were opened no later than Tuesday. By Thursday 92% of those responding said their roads were open.

The resourceful readers of OurGreenwich.com used numerous sources for information.  The biggest source of news and information was “Word of Mouth” (calls from friends, discussions with neighbors, etc.) with 60% of the respondents using that tried and true method. Forty-four percent turned to Greenwich Time (print or website) and 40% turned to WGCH (Greenwich radio). Not far behind was News 12 (36%). No one reported using either the website or print edition the Hearst weekly, the Greenwich Citizen.

“Social Networks” (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) provided information on the blackout to 28% of the respondents, and 24% used Greenwich Post (print or website or email alerts).

A good number of those who answered got information from “alerts” from the Town of Greenwich: 28% by “reverse 911” type calls, 20% by text message, and a like number by email from the town. The usefulness of the alerts was evenly split – a third thought them useful, a third didn’t, and a third didn’t yet subscribe to them. (You can subscribe by clicking here.)

Ranking the same as email and text alerts from the Town (20%) were news sources such as WSTC (Stamford radio), radio from NYC (WCBS, WINS, WABC, etc.) and OurGreenwich.com website (surprisingly high given the lack of Internet access by most readers). Only 12% turned to TV news from NYC – understandable since television was a luxury few people in the stricken areas had.

Again, let me point out that this is a non-scientific survey with a limited sample size and thus is more for entertainment value, than serious analysis.