ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

50,000 Lost Power in Outages, Mostly in Brooklyn. Service Is Slowly Returning.

NEW YORK — More than 13,000 customers were still without electricity in New York City and Westchester County on Monday afternoon, after 50,000 Con Edison customers lost power Sunday night during an intense three-day heat wave, officials said.

50,000 Lost Power in Outages, Mostly in Brooklyn. Service Is Slowly Returning.

The utility said it expected service to be fully restored in the afternoon, one day after the company shut off power to 30,000 customers in southeast Brooklyn, so it could make repairs related to the dangerously high temperatures.

It was mostly customers in Brooklyn who were still without power Monday, officials said. Of the more than 3 million customers that Con Edison serves in the region, 900,000 of them are in the borough. As of noon, nearly 10,000 people — most of them in and around the neighborhoods of Canarsie, Mill Basin, Flatlands and Bergen Beach — were still facing outages.

The region had cooled by Monday, as residents across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut woke up in a kind of collective heat hangover. The thermometer fell to 80 degrees in New York City overnight, and the National Weather Service predicted temperatures would not rise much above the low 80s on Monday, though it warned of possible severe thunderstorms.

Still, even as the heat broke, Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out against Con Edison during a news conference Monday, demanding answers and saying he no longer trusted the utility.

ADVERTISEMENT

“This was obviously a predictable situation, and therefore, preventable,” de Blasio said, standing outside a command post in Brooklyn that had been set up to aid people affected by the power shutdowns. “What we’re getting continually is no clarity, no answers, no real timelines from Con Ed.”

City officials worked with the Red Cross to set up an emergency shelter at Junior High School 278 Marine Park in Brooklyn for people who needed medical attention or relief from the heat, de Blasio said. That shelter remained open Monday morning

Con Edison officials said they had faced a catch 22: If the utility had not shut off some power, there could have been a longer failure over a wider area.

“The actions we took were necessary to prevent longer outages to the impacted customers that would have occurred as a result of additional equipment damage,” the company said in a statement Monday morning.

On Sunday night, Con Edison officials said overhead lines supplying the area were in danger of overloading because of the heat.

ADVERTISEMENT

But both de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed their frustrations, saying the utility should have been ready for a higher-than-usual power demand given that temperatures had been expected to linger in the mid-90s for three days.

“We have been through this situation with Con Ed time and again, and they should have been better prepared — period,” Cuomo said in a statement Sunday evening.

Like much of the country, New York was under an extreme heat advisory during the weekend as a so-called heat dome spread from the central United States toward the Great Lakes and East Coast.

The city was not the only place to be stricken with blackouts during the heat wave. Massive power failures occurred in parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, where severe storms and fierce winds brought down power lines.

In southeast Michigan, where temperatures also rose above 90 degrees over the weekend, around 600,000 customers of DTE Energy lost electricity, and about 250,000 were still without power as of Monday morning, the company said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Strong storms also brought more modest failures in metropolitan Washington, where fewer than 5,000 utility company customers lost power Sunday night, as the heat wave was ending.

In New York, the power shutdown Sunday marked the second weekend in a row that parts of the city were driven into darkness.

On July 13, an equipment failure caused a blackout that left more than 70,000 customers on the West Side of Manhattan without electricity for more than three hours.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio had heaped criticism on Con Edison at the time, with Cuomo calling for an independent state investigation into the Manhattan blackout.

The governor went so far as to threaten to have the state Public Service Commission revoke Con Edison’s license as the sole distributor of electricity in virtually the entire city and parts of suburban Westchester County.

ADVERTISEMENT

While Sunday’s shutdown affected fewer people, it has taken far longer for Con Edison to restore power. Unsatisfied with the utility’s response, Cuomo called for state investigators to widen their inquiry to include the latest power failures.

The city’s public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, who previously represented parts of Brooklyn affected by the power failures on the City Council, said in a video posted to Twitter on Monday morning that he had been told the power would be restored by midnight.

That outages continued Monday, he said, was a failure on Con Edison’s part.

“There’s still no electricity in many parts,” he said. “This is outrageous. Con Edison, you have so many questions that you need to answer.”

On Monday, de Blasio said he felt that Con Edison had not provided a satisfactory explanation for either episode. He called for an investigation into the utility’s structure and practices that would help keep the company more accountable.

ADVERTISEMENT

“At this point, I do not have faith in Con Ed,” he said.

Con Edison did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the criticisms.

Regulators have penalized the company for blackouts in the past. In 2007, the state Public Service Commission hit the company with an $18 million penalty for power failures, including a nine-day blackout in western Queens in 2006.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!

Unblock notifications in browser settings.
ADVERTISEMENT

Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:

Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng

Recommended articles

Here's everything to know about being a virgin on your wedding night

Here's everything to know about being a virgin on your wedding night

7 do's and don’ts of the Holy month of Ramadan

7 do's and don’ts of the Holy month of Ramadan

Top 5 sweetest celebrity mother-child relationships that stand out for us

Top 5 sweetest celebrity mother-child relationships that stand out for us

International Women's Day: 5 Nigerian female celebrities championing women’s rights

International Women's Day: 5 Nigerian female celebrities championing women’s rights

Top 5 female directors in Nollywood

Top 5 female directors in Nollywood

6 things that will break a Muslim's fast during Ramadan

6 things that will break a Muslim's fast during Ramadan

5 benefits of fasting during Ramadan

5 benefits of fasting during Ramadan

5 reasons Easter was more fun when we were children

5 reasons Easter was more fun when we were children

Dos and don’ts of supporting Muslims during Ramadan

Dos and don’ts of supporting Muslims during Ramadan

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT