Day after day, Con Edison promised that power would soon be restored to all restorations for nearly all New Yorkers who lost electricity in the wake of Tropical Storm Isaias. And while the number of people without power has dropped daily, others have remained idiosyncratic as the company sent updated warnings about when power “should be back”, such as a new “restoration period.”
By Tuesday morning, the energy company had restored electricity to 98 percent of the 260,000 customers affected by the storm that shattered power lines and trees.
However, 1,200 customers in Queens still lack power, with “small numbers” in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Some 4,600 customers in Westchester do not yet have electrical service.
Another 4,800 outages were also addressed – but they were not related to the storm. The company did not immediately provide a distribution by province of those outages as to what caused them.
Shavana Wong of South Ozone Park, Queens received a warning Tuesday afternoon saying power was restored in her area (although her home did not yet have power) after being promised electricity recovery on Aug. 6, Aug. 8, Aug. 9, 10 August, and again at Tuesday 10 p.m.
Wong called customer service in recent days to see if the company had more details, and was told as soon as no crew was assigned on Saturday.
After receiving the warning saying that power had been restored in her area, she told us, “the wires are still hanging high in the block and the post that fell is still leaning.”
A screenshot of Con Edison warns of a Queens customer who was without power for a week.
Delivered by Shavana Wong
A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately comment on why customers received such updates, only to be let down.
On Tuesday, the company said it would “continue with the same intensity and emphasis on safety” for the remaining “scattered outages” of the storm.
“The remaining outages mainly include extensive damage and complicated restorations for individual customers,” according to a press release from Con Edison.
Elections of elected officials on Tuesday demanded that Con Ed give a discount to 73,000 customers in the neighborhood for the August bill to compensate for the outages, which continued as a heat wave hit the city.
“Con Edison now has the power to choose to do justice to its Queens customers for the prolonged trauma and danger imposed on them,” Acting Queens Borough President Sharon Lee said in a statement. “The only thing reliable about Con Edison post-Isaias was their constant failure to communicate accurately and effectively with the public.”
City Councilman Peter Koo, who represents Flushing, said, “In a post-Sandy New York City, there is simply no excuse for being overwhelmed and unprepared for a storm of this magnitude.”
See here for where you can pick up dry ice in Westchester and Queens. Fill out a claim form here for removed foods and medicines.
