About 200,000 National Grid customers were left in the dark earlier this week when powerful storms tore through communities across the state. As of Thursday afternoon, the utility company was reporting nearly 23,000 outages.

“It was crazy,” recalled Chestertown resident Jim Walker. “We have a huge ash tree next to our house, a big limb came down, just missed the house and tore the power lines down right outside our bathroom window.”

Walker described downed trees and power lines, telephone poles snapped in half for hundreds of yards up and down his road.

“We had upwards of 150 in eastern part of New York that came down,” National Grid communication manager Patrick Stella said Thursday. “And it can take anywhere from four to six hours to replace a pole.”

It's a monumental task in any location, let alone some of the rural areas impacted by the storms.

“It’s a lot of space. It’s a lot of roads, and when you have an impassible road, it can take a while to get those trees removed,” Stella explained. “There is just a lot of things that go into getting to the problems.”

Still without power, Walker and his wife Crystal made the 30-minute drive Thursday to a National Grid distribution point in Warrensburg.

“We’re giving out dry ice and bottled water to some of the areas that were hardest hit,” Stella said.

More than 60 customers trickled through, most of which were packed with patience and gratitude.

“It’s going to take a while to fix all that, and these guys are doing a great job,” Walker said. “We’re going to be able to save our food. We have freezer full of food.”

National Grid is working to have about 90% of those without power back online later Thursday night, but passed along a friendly reminder that restoration times are estimates.