Hartford - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Monday delivered his harshest critique yet of Connecticut Light & Power and tried to distance himself from the beleaguered utility, which failed to meet a self-imposed Sunday deadline for restoring power to 99 percent of customers who lost electricity following a freak Oct. 29 autumn snowstorm.

Forty-one thousand customers, mostly in central Connecticut, were still in the dark by Monday evening. CL&P set a new deadline for restoration: "100 percent" by Wednesday night.

But Malloy's focus was the deadline missed.

"They told us they would have completed something and they failed to do it," the governor said in a news conference at the Capitol. "I want to be very clear: We did not set that standard - they set that standard. There's no one to blame but themselves."

In a break from recent routine, Malloy did not join CL&P President Jeffrey Butler at the regular 6 p.m. news briefing inside the state's Emergency Operations Center and instead addressed reporters from outside his Capitol office.

Asked about the change of venue, the governor said, "I decided to make it very clear that I am not vouching for the information that they're giving."

He accused CL&P of having "a gigantic credibility problem."

"They are a monopoly, and a monopoly is a trust with the people that they serve," Malloy said. "It is clear that they have failed to honor that trust."

The Halloween weekend snowstorm downed foliage-heavy trees across the state, in turn snapping innumerable power lines. More than 830,000 CL&P customers were without power at the peak of the outages.

The storm is considered the worst electric outage event in Connecticut's history and beats the previous record, set barely two months ago following Tropical Storm Irene. At least 10 deaths have been blamed on the snowstorm's outages, mostly as the result of carbon monoxide poisonings.

The consequences for CL&P of this latest large-scale outage could depend on the findings of a consultant's investigation. Washington-based Witt Associates, led by James Lee Witt, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has agreed to Malloy's request to review and evaluate CL&P's and United Illuminating's preparation and response.

The governor said the consultant will not charge the state for this work, which began this week and is to finish by Dec. 1.

"If the findings suggest that mistakes were made that shouldn't have been made, we will hold those responsible to those mistakes," Malloy said.

Charles Fisher, Witt Associates' vice president for preparedness operations, said an investigation team has arrived in Connecticut, met with the office of Attorney General George Jepsen and is requesting documents from the utilities. The team's next step is interviewing utility employees from executives down to linemen and meeting with municipal leaders to hear their evaluations of what happened.

Legal action against CL&P remains a possibility, Malloy said, "depending on what we find, and I presume we're going to find some degree of malfeasance, which may arise to a recoverable action."

The governor said he's been in contact with Charles Shivery, chief executive officer of CL&P's parent company, Northeast Utilities.

"What I told Charles was this: His company's handling of this entire situation has been unacceptable," Malloy recalled. "It's taken too long to get power back on. There have been too many problems, and it's time for him to change the way his operation is being managed.

"Charles has assured me that they are - and these are his words - 'pouring crews into high impacted towns in order to get everyone's power restored by (Wednesday) night.'"

Butler said at his news conference Monday that CL&P has swelled to 10 times its normal work force to address the outages. He emphasized the magnitude of the outages as a result of nature's storm and said he welcomes the consultant's investigation, which he believes will find strengths as well as some weaknesses to CL&P's operations.

"I realize one area where we need to focus on is around communication and coordinations during the storm," Butler said.

The governor told reporters earlier in the day that CL&P's trouble communicating details to local officials about restoration efforts "is astounding to me." He said the utility may simply lack the capacity to handle a calamity such as this one.

Butler acknowledged that his utility heard similar complaints about its communication following the Irene outages but said that CL&P has yet to distill the lessons learned from the tropical storm because its internal reviews of Irene aren't yet complete.

j.reindl@theday.com