After restoring areas where "thousands" of customers could regain power at once, Con Edison officials said this evening they are now focusing on smaller areas in Westchester County and New York City.
"It's been a massive undertaking," Senior Vice President of Electric Operations John Miksad told the media today. "We appreciate our customers' patience."
At this point, Miksad said the company anticipates having "all" customers back online by the end of this weekend.
As of 7:30 p.m. on Monday, approximately 58,865 customers in the county are in the dark, according to the company's website.
Miksad said Con Edison had been prioritizing areas where large numbers of customers could be restored at once and is now focus on areas where "hundreds, 50s or dozens" of customers can be restored.
The company reportedly restored approximately 50,000 of its New York City and Westchester customers overnight and plans for that number to decrease moving forward as smaller amounts of customers' power outages are addressed.
Miksad also said Con Edison has been monitoring the upcoming Nor'easter, which he said will likely bring high winds, rain and possibly snow to the region, beginning Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday.
School continue to be a priority for the company as well, Miksad said. He reported five Westchester County schools were without power as of today.
In response to a reporter's inquiry about the company's efficiency so far, Miksad stated, "I don't know of any other way we could have done this faster."
Miksad said the staging areas for workers, such as at Rye Playland, are helping crews "maximize their time."
"I can't imagine a more efficient operation," he said, "but I'm always open to suggestions..."
When you see 5 trucks from Mississippi the day after that is impressive organization, but when they sit on the road doing nothing but wait for instructions for days while there are trees down all around them, THAT IS AN INEXCUSABLE DISGRACE! Don't assess the situiation for days. GET TO WORK. It's obvious that you have to cut the trees off the lines! The USA deserves to be taken over by a hard Mexican work ethic combined with German ingenuity and design! The Mexicans were hard at work removing branches from lawns- a frivolous, insulting use of labor while people were freezing. Yet, if the USA would organize them to help with the essentials, everything would run perfectly! The landscapers shouldn't be running a leaf blower on an estate with a generator. Instead, they should be paid by CONED to gather firewood for the cold people, or do something useful. On long island, unions refused to allow non-unions to restore power! Shameful Greed!
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/All/B40C096675BE10C085257687006F39E7?OpenDocument
We are doing an investigative TV piece on ny electricity system for sinovision, a tv network based in nyc. Will drive up to Westchester this Friday to do some filming. We want to hear what residents say about the outage (found lots of important comments on this board). Please do contact us if you're wiling to talk to us. nanchen1895@yahoo.com
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/All/B40C096675BE10C085257687006F39E7?OpenDocument
Going without power for so many days is extremely difficult and an enormous hardship. There are babies, elderly, sick and disabled people who need heat and electric especially. There is NO REASON for people to still be without power. We are the USA, not some third world country. So many have come to our area from all over to help. Where are THEY? Where are the CON ed trucks? I haven't seen any trucks in my neighborhood!! We still STILL have trees blocking roads, 8 days after Sandy hit. WHY? This is unacceptable. And now we can look forward to more outages due to the nor'easter--because no one saw it coming, right? Just like no one saw Sandy coming days and days before either, right? Oh and gotta love the gas-gouging going on in Cortlandt Manor/Mohegan Lake/Shrub Oak. Gas was under $4.00 pre-Sandy. At the Cortlandt Mobil, I paid 4.50+ yesterday. Disgraceful. Hope Cuomo holds these people accountable too.
You live in the suburbs. You don't want to cut down tress, but then they take out your power, thousands of limbs, trees, branches, shorts, etc, etc, etc. then you wonder why. Last year, I waited at home depot for 7 hours along with about 30 other people awaiting an 18 wheeler full of Generators traveling from Indiana (the day before) picking up Generators along the way at other home depot stores. I was #1 on a list of 250 customers and going on our 4th day without power. It was the best $649 I've spent. Of course, after plugging in the essentials, NYSEG shows up hours after, my luck. But, a very large limb which fell on our wires, had pulled the wires loose from the meter pan (box) so while our neighbors had power, we did not. The next day it was fixed. Fast forward to last Monday, a year later, 5:25PM our power went out, 5:30 PM, most of the power in our house was back on, the important stuff, fridge, heat, water pump, T.V., some lights. I get roughly 14 hours on a full tank of gas. Cables, ends and transfer box added another $450, so for about $1,100, we can stay at home, comfortably. I keep 4, 5 gal. cans of gas in my shed. I'm sure many of you can probably afford whole house unit, $4500 +\-.
A generator is a must have. The investment in a natural gas generator that powers the burner for heat was one of the best investments we ever made. But a low cost generator is perfectly fine for the essentials.
Cutting back /down trees in the burbs is essential, and is more cost effective than trying to bury each and every power line in old neighborhoods.
I have convinced my parents to get a Nat Gas Standby unit. They are in their 90's so running outside in bad weather is a bad idea. I was looking at Gasoline to Nat Gas conversion kit, for myself but it seems flaky. I bought a Nat Gas BBQ and it is great.
Re: generators, I will finally break down and get one. We didn't b/c on rare occasions where we lost power we had it back within hours. I do not ever want to be in a situation where we are without power for days. My initial thought is to find a whole-house generator that runs on propane. I figure we can store propane tanks in the shed. I don't ever want to wait on a gas line to power up my home. I am new to this generator thing and wondering if it's even possible/feasible to have a whole-house generator run off propane, so would appreciate anyone's advice/opinions. My heart goes out to those STILL without power. It's just unacceptable. Heads need to roll. Please contact Gov. Cuomo directly: http://www.governor.ny.gov/contact/GovernorContactForm.php Instead of filling out the form, I personally am going to write a letter and send it certified mail, return receipt requested. But please please please contact our governor in whatever manner possible regarding this absolutely horrendous situation.