BOSTON -- One New England utility says it was hit hard by the remnants of Hurricane Noel. But emergency officials say there have been no evacuations, deaths or serious injuries from the storms in the region.

Waves, Winds Batter Massachusetts Coast

At least two house fires are indirectly blamed on the storm, and several thousand coastal residents from Maine to Massachusetts are expected to spend a second night without power.

The storm's glancing blow was enough to knock out power Saturday to 80,000 homes, but only a fourth of those remained without power by late Sunday afternoon. And NStar says the company expects everyone to be powered up by Monday.

The storm dropped more than 5 inches of rain on parts of Maine, with 6 inches of snow in the northern end of the state.

Earlier, Noel was blamed for at least 57 deaths in Haiti, 84 in the Dominican Republic and one each in the Bahamas and Jamaica.

"I heard a boom," said Kimberly Mickiewicz of Marshfield, Mass., as they were plunged into the dark when a tree came down on a power line.

At the Lobster Tail restaurant in Marshfield, the wind blew in a window. "The ladies jumped and were a little startled, but we kept everything together," said owner Mike Bradbury.

In Chatham, Mass., at the elbow of Cape Cod, some stores were closed due to the nor'easter, and several windows were also boarded up with plywood.

The nor'easter moved more slowly than forecasters had expected and its greatest impact hit at the evening high tide.

"We'll see more coastal flooding and beach erosion than we anticipated," said Chatham harbormaster Stuart Smith.

In Centerville, a family using candles in the dark saw their home badly damaged by fire. Scott and Lynette LaFleur and their three children escaped without injury, but a dog and cat were killed.

"It was an extremely difficult fire with high winds pushing the fire through the house," Fire Chief John Farrington told the Cape Cod Times.

Another home in Osterville, Mass., caught fire when a falling tree hit power lines.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency activated its Emergency Operations Center in Framingham, Mass.

Utility company NSTAR placed crews on Martha's Vineyard to respond to power problems on the island. The company also said it had 128 trucks at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., to dispatch to any outages.

About 2,600 National Grid customers briefly lost power on Nantucket, Mass., but power was quickly restored, said Jackie Barry, a company spokeswoman

The storm's impact in New England was much less severe than the havoc it caused in the Caribbean as a tropical storm last week. It left at least 142 people dead across Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

U.S. rescue teams headed to the Dominican Republic Friday as it recovered from the wrath of the storm.

In addition to the rescue teams, two U.S. Coast Guard helicopters were deployed. The U.S. has contributed more than $1 million in aid.

The deaths made Noel the deadliest storm of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, which ends Nov. 30. Hurricane Felix, a monster Category 5 storm, killed at least 101 people in early September, mostly along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras.

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<B>Previous Stories:</B>
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<li>November 3, 2007: <A HREF="/news/14506622/detail.html">Hurricane Noel Remnants Head To New England</A></li>
<li>October 29, 2007: <A HREF="/news/14445869/detail.html">Tropical Storm Noel To Hit Haiti</A></li>
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