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WPCNR THE POWER STORY. From Consolidated Edison. Released Saturday 9 A.M. March 10, 2018:

Forget about merely trying to repair damages from last week’s back-to-back storms in the Northeast, said Con Edison’s Chairman and CEO John McAvoy on Friday during a press conference at the New York headquarters .

Credit: Con Edison

“With winter storms we’re used to seeing trees and limbs come down and take down our wires and interrupt power for our customers,” McAvoy said. “These storms — the tree damage we’re seeing is much more extensive.

“And the result of that is we’re not just repairing our system, in many cases we’re actually rebuilding it,” he said about the storms’ impacts, which unloaded heavy, wet snow and whipped roaring 70-mph-plus winds through ConEd’s service territory, first on March 2 and then on March 4.

McAvoy said the number of outages that ConEd saw in both storms was “very significantly higher” than what’s typically seen for these levels of storms. “If you compare it to Hurricane Irene, which occurred in 2011, 50 percent more outages in Westchester from the storms than from the hurricane,“ he said.

“What we saw that caused so much damage was a three-fold part of the weather equation. First, extremely high winds with gusts up to 70 miles per hour, a heavy, wet snow that really stuck to the trees, and ground and soil that were saturated and that allowed many trees to become fully uprooted as a result of the high levels of precipitation. This is basically completely a tree event,” McAvoy said.

As of this morning, ConEd reported that crews have restored service for about 187,000 of the roughly 200,000 customers that lost it during that short span of time.

The mutual aid process that’s set up to allow utilities throughout the country to share resources with each other quickly located many crews from other areas to the Northeast to support ConEd.

“We helped Puerto Rico in their time of need. When the second storm hit we decided to recall our employees from Puerto Rico and they are now back and added to the restoration,” added McAvoy.

ConEd currently has 2,000 people working in the field, including about 600 ConEd employees and approximately 1,400 mutual aid workers, said McAvoy. “And we expect that we will get another 400 over the next several days.”

Company officials acknowledged earlier on Friday that some of the toughest work remains, with more than 86 Westchester County roads closed, more than 600 of the outages involving single customers, and numerous locations having severe tree damage.

Crews restoring service will first focus on repairs to critical facilities, such as hospitals, municipal pumping stations and schools, according to a ConEd statement. Customers who are still out of power from last week’s storms will be given “the highest priority for restoration,” the company said, and restoration efforts will continue on a 24-hour basis until every customer is restored.

 

COUNTY EXECUTIVE LATIMER ADDRESSING SOLIDARITY MEETING AT COUNTY CENTER THIS MORNING.

WPCNR THE POWER STORY. By John Bailey. March  9, 2018 reported from Facebook Stream:

As of 11:30 this morning, 13,000 Con Edison Customers are without power in Westchester County, NYSEG reports 6,941, Joan Macdonald, Director of Operations for the County said moments ago 11:15 A.M.

As of yesterday morning there were 47,000 out of power between the two companies.

Con Ed and NYSEG over 24 hours has restored a little over 1,000 Customers (with meters),  an hour. This after outages had tripled to 47,000 Wednesday morning.

The County Executive had easily 100 persons on the dais behind him at the Little Theater in the county center, criticized Con Ed for communication chaos, speaking in “corporate speak,” to county and local officials and misinforming customers and failure to work directly with communities to bring back power.

A young woman from Mount Vernon, Rikka Mills (above) a community particularly hard hit, said she had three disabled children. Her voice breaking, she described repeatedly calling Con Ed, reporting her plight. She said Con Ed did not get in touch with her. I was brought to tears when she said plaintively, “This is not O.K. Not at all.”

Ms. Mills in tears related her Con Ed horror:

 “We have been without power since Friday, I have two disabled children, and they should never been in this situation. It is so hard to bring them home to a cold house because change is difficult for them. Each time we spoke with ConED they would say ‘it will come back on soon.’ When I was driving around in the snowstorm to find a hotel I got a text from ConED saying the power was back on – and when we went back home it was still out.”

Before starting his press conference he called for the Con Ed Board to replace their senior management. He said Con Edison had failed in its responsibility, lost the confidence of its customers.

Linda Puglisi Town Supervisor of Cortlandt, said time after time event after event Con Ed has failed:

“In 27 years as Town Supervisor, I have gone through storms, hurricanes, nor’easters, flooding and it is the same ending of the story each time – and let me tell you it is not a happy ending, it is a nightmare.”

Latimer in response to a news conference question said the county had no power to effect the change, that was up to the Con Ed Board and shareholders to do that.

Latimer criticized Con Ed and NYSEG for failing to set up command centers in towns to interact with town police and leaders. Inadequate briefings to the county and callusnous towards its customers. He said Con Ed management had lost the confidence of the people.

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