THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR

WPCNR THE POWER NEWS.By John F. Bailey. November 9, 2012:

Con Edison trimmed the number of White Plains citizens without power to 624 as of 7 A.M. this morning. The utility lowered those customers without electricity in Westchester County to 17,319 trimming those without from 28,000 over night. The company was on pace to complete power restoration by Saturday, their original estimate last week.

Kevin Burke, Chief Executive Officer of Con Edison, appeared at a news conference introducing a FEMA information operation at the Westchester County Center Thursday afternoon organized by County Executive Rob Astorino and “faced the music.”

The occasion was to introduce the information center that officially opens at 8 A.M. this morning that will be staffed with FEMA representatives to start the claims process, answer and gather information from victims of Hurricane Sandy in Westchester, set up inspections of the victims’ properties and advise them of what they needed in documentation. Victims suffering losses from Hurricane Sandy do not need an appointment and if you can get to the County Center you can walk right in and get your claims rolling.

WPCNR in the news conference, asked Burke why restoration teams in a city or town were not continuous– that is  Cut and Clear Teamx, debris removal teams and a power restore team appearing in sequence. WPCNR observed one debris removal team arrive in a White Plains location only to be pulled off because a Cut and Clear Team was not available, delaying restoration at that specific location they had started in White Plains. Had a Cut and Clear team been available the operation would have taken two hours not nine.

Burke did not comment on the operations procedure as to why Cut and Clear teams would not proceed to each downed wire in a location one-by-one, depower, then  the same or different team return after clean-up crews had cleared the roads, immediately following with a reconnect. Twelve White Plains teams did not arrive until late last Friday. If fragmented restorations such as these occurred in other cities it would appear to stretch out power restorations unnecessarily due to excessive wait time for specialists.

Burke told WPCNR the local restorations were delayed because of the Westchester County priority of restoring hospitals, nursing homes, schools and polling places first. WPCNR questions on the degree of dedicated crews  dedication to certain cities and towns restorations, are still awaiting answers from Con Edison Media Relations.

Burke was pressed by Congresswoman Nita Lowey. She asked him ten days after the restoration started “what do you need at this point,” seeming to indicate she would get the federal government involved.  Burke replied the company had enough crews brought in to restore the County.

Pressured by a reporter on when Con Edison had officially called crews in from out-of-state, Burke said the crews could not come right away because crews had to be “released” by utilities in those out-of-state locations. Pressed as to when Con Ed officially started the back-up out-of-state utilities on their way,  Burke said he did not remember when Consolidated Edison had notified the out of state crews to send help (to Westchester).

Asked by another reporter how he Burke was doing on having his residence restored, Burke said he had power in one residence, but he did not know whether he had power in his two other homes in Connecticut.

County Executive Rob Astorino said there would be a thorough review of Consolidated Edison performance in handling the disaster, and what was needed was clearly better communciation with communities by Consolidated Edison  and on-site liaisons with each community government. WPCNR found in White Plains that  at least two out-of-state crews in White Plains lost hours of restoration time due to Con Ed not having liaisons meeting them on time to tell them what their assignment in the city was to be (this after 9 days of operations).

Town Supervisor of Greenburgh, Paul Feiner, who has loudly criticised Con Ed response the last 9 days was not at the news conference to speak to Mr. Burke. Feiner told WPCNR he had not been made aware of the news conference by Westchester County nor was he invited, “I was busy responding to hundreds of e mails and phone calls about outages from outraged con ed customers.”

WPCNR did not observe White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach at the news conference either,though Mr.Roach announced the 3 P.M. opening of the FEMA operation in his Thursday afternoon Storm Recovery Update at 1:30 P.M. WPCNR questions of the Mayor’s Office as to whether the Mayor attended, or had an aid attend to observe have not been responded  to as of this report. The Mayor has been critical of lthe pace of Con Ed operations in the city, and it was an opportunity to speak with Mr. Burke directly about the problems, as many County Legislators did.

Thomas Abinanti, one County Legislator, was blunt in talking to the press, he called Con Edison’s response to the Westchester outage, “Unprecedented mismanagement,” and told all media who would listen and County Executive Astorino directly he was suing to remove Con Edison as the county utility. Abinanti has been without power for 12 days.

Nita Lowey, was asked by WPCNR if she felt a national disaster utility standing force should be formed by the Federal Government, a military like organization. Lowey said such a force might have possibilities,  but was non-committal on the matter, saying the state had the national guard (which does not make utility repairs) but WPCNR hopes to get a more definitive statement from her today. 

Here are the Con Ed Outage Figures as of 7:15: