Tens of thousands of New Yorkers entered their fourth day with no electricity Tuesday, as Consolidated Edison workers again labored to combat the effects of the summer’s weather.
About 15,000 Con Edison customers, or an estimated 60,000 people, remained without power in Westchester County late Tuesday morning, spokesman Chris Olert said. The utility expected to have most power restored by Wednesday.
“I don’t want to be like Queens,” said Hastings-on-Hudson resident Ann Dosin, recalling the 10-day July blackout that had irate city officials and residents publicly blaming Con Ed for its performance.
“They’re working in another area. But we have no electric, so why isn’t somebody here working?” Dosin asked Monday as she stood outside her home, where she’s been attempting to salvage her refrigerated food with dry ice.
“The storm hit us harder than we expected. But right now we’re going block by block and house by house to restore all of our customers in Westchester County,” said another Con Edison spokesman, Alfonso Quiroz.
Con Ed said the current outages were purely weather-related, unlike those in Queens, which have been blamed on equipment failures.
About 660,000 people in Long Island, Westchester and New York City lost power at some point Saturday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto lashed the region, according to the Long Island Power Authority and Con Ed.
LIPA said it restored service Monday to the last of its 128,000 affected customers. A customer can include an entire household or building.
Some losses on Long Island were more permanent. In Huntington, a tree that was believed to be about 550 years old fell after the storm.
The tree, known affectionately to locals as the Big Oak and believed to be the oldest black oak in North America, once stood 90 feet tall.
Throughout Westchester, the number of downed trees tangled with wires, some of them live, was slowing the cleanup, officials said.
“You have to have the utility crews with you to confirm that the wires are not energized,” said Anthony Sutton, the county’s commissioner of emergency services. “It takes multiple crews to restore just one customer.”
