After severe storms blasted through the state late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, knocking power out to hundreds of thousands of customers and causing major damage in much of the northeastern part of the state, there was widespread expectation for a quick declaration of a state of emergency by the governor. This would relax some regulations and restrictions to enable swifter response by government emergency agencies and relief organizations, as well as trigger consumer protections laws against price gouging, et cetera.
What happened next was chaos.
