Seventy-two hours after Tropical Storm Irene knocked out power for nearly half a million Long Island Power Authority customers throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties, roughly 190,000 homes are still in the dark.
LIPA said Wednesday afternoon that two-thirds of homes and businesses that lost electricity have regained power as crews continue to work through “difficult conditions.” Ninety thousand customers saw lights come back on in the last 24 hours, as frustrated residents continue to cope with the worst storm that hit the Island since Hurricane Gloria in 1985.
Pictures from Irene submitted to the Press by readers
The utility expects more than 90 percent of customers will have power by the end of day Friday. Approximately 523,000, about half of LIPA’s customers, lost power when Irene first hit.
Submit your own post-Irene pictures
LIPA is “doing everything we possibly can,” Michael Hervey, LIPA’s chief operating officer, said at a press conference. He said large blocks of customers are being restored on an hourly basis and warned the process will require crews to turn off power for some residents, increasing the number of outages in the short term, in order to get others back up.
All hospitals are powered up, but four nursing homes remain without power.
Many frustrated Long Islanders living in the dark are complaining that they haven’t seen LIPA crews out on the streets fixing damages. But LIPA officials defended their workers, saying crews began their work at substations before hitting the streets. Hervey described those substations as the “backbone” of the system.
“The evidence is there that we’re out working,” said John Bruckner of National Grid.
Restoration timelines for individual neighborhoods is not yet available, Hervey said.
Majority of power outages were caused by downed trees knocking down power lines and traffic signals throughout the Island.
Seventy-six thousand feet of wire and 633 transformers was pulled off the road during cleanup so far, Bruckner said.
Officials warned residents not to touch cables that may look dead.
“Downed wires should always be treated as if they’re alive,” Hervey said.
Over 190,000 calls fro LIPA have been made to customers with the utility expecting to call every house by the end of the day Wednesday.
With LIPA’s customer service center closed billing and collections has been suspended. Customers with power can pay bills on the web.
About 330,000 New Yorkers are without power. Over 35,000 in the New York City metro area and 104,000 customers don’t have power upstate as of Wednesday morning.