With thousands of New Yorkers still without power after Tropical Storm Isaias, Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency to help with clean-up and power restoration.
The counties included in the declaration are the Bronx, Dutchess, Kings, Nassau, New York, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester counties. Cuomo has also directed the New York National Guard to mobilize 50 soldiers with vehicles to assist Putnam County officials with storm response, cleanup missions and ice and water distribution.
“We’re taking an all-hands-on-deck approach and activating every resource at our disposal to expedite communities’ recovery from the impacts of Tropical Storm Isaias,” Governor Cuomo said. “The State is working closely with local governments to help ensure they have the help they need to get back on their feet. We’re far too familiar with severe weather, but New Yorkers show their true spirit in times of crisis and we’ll prove it once more.”
According to Con Edison, 177,304 Con Edison customers are without service across New York City and Westchester. Con Edison told reporters that out of the original 300,000 estimated without power, Con Edison has been able to restore power for 115,000 customers, with that number reaching 150,000 by Thursday morning.
Con Edison expects that power will be fully restored by Sunday night.
Outside of Westchester County, Queens by far has the most reported outages with 43,159 people without power in total. The next highest number is in the Bronx, which has 22,922 customers still without power, followed by Staten Island with 16,357,
Brooklyn has 4,389 people reported without power while Manhattan has the lowest number with 116 reported New Yorkers without power.
In a statement, Con Edison said that restoring power will take multiple days, as Con Edison crews must get to thousands of sites, set up their work areas and replace poles, wires and transformers knocked down by winds that gusted up to 70 miles per hour. Isaias’s destruction surpassed Hurricane Irene’s, which caused 204,000 customer outages in August 2011. The record for storm-related outages is 1.1 million caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.
Con Edison is reminding customers to not go near any downed wires and to test them like they are live. If your power goes out, disconnect or turn off appliances that would otherwise turn on automatically when service is restored. If several appliances start up at once, the electric circuits may overload.
To report an outage, visit coned.com/reportoutage or with Con Edison’s mobile app for iOS or Android devices, or by calling 1-800-75-CONED (1-800-752-6633).
Updated at 4:50 p.m.
