Updates from municipal conference call with Con Ed...response from Optimum...dry ice at New Rochelle City Hall...frustrations why Con Ed was so unprepared
UPDATE CON ED RESTORATION... UPDATE ALTICE (OPTIMUM)
MOST PEOPLE AROUND COUNTY HAVE NOT SEEN MANY CON ED RESTORATION TRUCKS --BREAK UP THE CON ED MONOPOLY
(will post this on the town website--if you don’t receive e mail updates and want to receive updates please e mail me or jlucasey@greenburghny.com
Just got off a conference call with Con Ed leadership and other municipal officials. The Greenburgh Police Chief and Commissioner of Public Works participated in the call. There are still about 4,500 households without power in unincorporated Greenburgh. Con Ed is not providing local officials with estimated times when specific sections of locations will be restored. They indicated that most people will have power back on by Sunday. But- also mentioned that there will be others who WILL NOT get their power back on till sometime next week.
Every municipality in Westchester participated in the conference call - and everyone had similar concerns. Greenburgh is one of the hardest hit communities in the county. Some Westchester municipalities reported that 75% of their households are still out of power. It’s frustrating because most people haven’t seen any Con Ed trucks responding to the outages. Con Ed does not answer to local governments. Con Ed makes the decisions how many crews will be sent to each community and when restoration will begin. According to the police chief, Con Ed assigned Greenburgh only one cut and clear and one tree crew. Our DPW and police have been helping expedite the recovery. Obviously, this is not enough.
Some people have been complaining to me that they had power but lost power yesterday. Con Ed frequently will shut off power in one area -while working to restore power elsewhere. Con Ed has not been able to provide me with estimated restoration times.
IF ANY RESIDENT HAS MEDICAL PROBLEMS THEY SHOULD CONTACT THE POLICE AT 989-1700. Our EMS will help. Getting complaints from residents with diabetes and with people who need oxygen. Our Greenburgh police will help out.
It’s very upsetting. Con Ed was unprepared. Didn’t have enough crews. Out of state crews are coming to help. Con Ed should have had crews from out of state available as soon as they heard that a storm was coming to our area. Every time there is an outage the same thing happens: Con Ed is blamed for being unprepared. NYS conducts an investigation. And the next time there is a major storm the same thing happens. I join those who believe the PSC and the state should break up the Con Ed monopoly.
UPDATE RECEIVED FROM OPTIMUM GOVERNMENT LIAISON
Besides power outages many residents are complaining because they don’t have internet, cable service. They are working from home and the lack of service is impacting their business. This is what I received from the Altice government liaison.
As you probably know, this storm caused widespread damage. The vast majority of the service related issues for our customers relate to commercial power impacts. To the extent that there are impacts on our plant due to the storm, we need to ensure the situations are safe (no live electrical wires) prior to proceeding. We are working as fast as we can to restore services if the outage is not related to loss of commercial power. There can certainly be scenarios where power dips (on then off) which is typically the result of our services coming on and dropping again.
I’m tracking our restoration efforts around the Greenburgh area and will continue to do so until services are restored.
JOHN Dullaghan, altice USA
DRY ICE BEING GIVEN OUT AT NEW ROCHELLE CITY HALL TODAY TILL 6 PM.
PAUL FEINER
Greenburgh Town Supervisor