Acting Borough President Sharon Lee called for Con Edison to provide a rebate to customers in Queens who lost power during Tropical Storm Isaias on Tuesday, Aug. 11,
2020. Photo courtesy of Lee’s offi ce
Offi cials demand Con Edison give rebate to Queens
customers who lost power during tropical storm
BY JACOB KAYE
With thousands of Con Edison
customers in Queens still
without power a week after
Tropical Storm Isaias ripped
through New York, Acting
Borough President Sharon Lee
blasted the power company on
Tuesday, Aug. 11.
Finding fault in Con Edison’s
level of preparation and
their “inequitable and disproportionate
pace of power restoration,”
Lee, a handful of elected
officials at various levels of
government, community board
members and Queens residents
affected by the outages called
for a full rebate in August for
the 73,000 customers who lost
power as a result of the storm
on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
“Con Edison has the power
now to choose to do right by
its Queens customers for the
prolonged trauma and danger
imposed upon them,” Lee said.
“I urge Con Edison to offer immediate
and full rebates to the
73,000 Queens customers on
this month’s bill to remedy this
disproportionate and inequitable
restoration. It is the very
least Con Edison can do.”
According to Lee, there is
precedent for Con Edison clearing
customers’ energy bill following
widespread outages. In
2006, a Con Edison power outage
left 174,000 people in the
borough in the dark. It was later
determined that the power
company had failed to address
issues with power equipment
which, in turn, caused the outages.
The power company agreed
to a settlement that provided
$17 million to customers affected
by the outages, half of which
went toward bill credits.
By Tuesday, Aug. 11,
over 2,740 customers in Queens
were experiencing outages, although
not all outages were a
direct result of the storm, according
to Con Edison.
Tropical Storm Isaias
brought with it the secondlargest
outage event in the
company’s history. At its peak,
TIMESLEDGER | 2 QNS.COM | AUG. 14-20, 2020
more than 73,000 customers
were without power in Queens
— the record for storm-related
outages is 1.1 million caused by
Hurricane Sandy in October
2012. It also brought down a
high number of trees, with over
9,000 complaints of downed
trees in Queens made to the
New York City Parks Department
24 hours after the storm.
While Lee and her colleagues
took issue with the
number of outages, they also
want answers for what they see
as a slow response to restore
power from Con Edison.
By Saturday, Aug. 8, around
14,000 customers in Queens
were still without power, accounting
for over half of the
outages remaining in the city,
according to Lee. A higher percentage
of customers had their
power restored by the company
in all four other boroughs.
“Con Edison’s recovery following
Tropical Storm Isaias
has been inadequate, sporadic
and unacceptable,” said New
York State Senator Toby Ann
Stavisky. “I understand restoring
power to 73,000 homes in
Queens is a difficult task, but
leaving thousands without power
nearly a week after the storm
is just plain dangerous. Con Ed
needs to be held accountable for
their listless response.”
According to Con Edison,
the company assess which repairs
will restore power for the
highest number of customers
and prioritizes those repairs.
“We restore power in blocks.
The damage that impacts the
most customers,” Con Edison
President Tim Cawley said
during an interview with NY1
Monday morning. “If we clear
up two trees and can restore
1,000 customers, we do that,
and we work our way down. So
early in the storm, the outage
numbers drop precipitously because
we’re working the largest
storm numbers first. At the
end, we’re working scattered
outages, where there is significant
labor with less customers
restored.”
Even Queens residents who
didn’t lose their power feel as
though they’ve been let down
by Con Edison.
Yalena Figueroa, a photographer
in Astoria, has
been without internet for a
week. Figueroa, who relies on
the internet for work and has
two children, said that her
internet connection cut out
around 3 p.m. on the day of the
storm. Although she never lost
power, a downed Con Edison
wire on her block has prevented
her internet provider from
being able to restoring service.
“Con Edison keeps telling
us, ‘tomorrow it will be fixed,’
but we’re going on a week now,”
Figueroa said. “We’ve been told
every day that someone is coming.
But no one ever comes.”
According to Figueroa,
Con Edison has been sending
a worker to sit by the downed
wire in 12-hour shifts, warning
people to stay away from it.
However, no one has attempted
to make the final repair.
“It’s just negligence at this
point,” Figueroa said.
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