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JULY 28, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
BY CHANDLER KIDD
Service has been restored
to nearly all Con Edison
customers in Brooklyn who
were without power as a result
of last weekend’s brutal
heat wave and Monday
night’s thunderstorm.
ConEd had shut off
power in parts of southern
Brooklyn — including Canarsie,
Marine Park, Mill
Basin and parts of Flatbush
— around 8:30 p.m. Sunday
night, and some customers
did not have power restored
until Tuesday.
One Georgetown resident
who endured the
Sunday night blackout described
a near-apocalyptic
scene of utter darkness,
with the only the visible
light emanating from car
headlights and the lights
of emergency vehicles in
the distance, and the roads
pocked by car accidents —
including one at Avenue
T near E. 65th Street, and
another on Avenue N near
Ralph Avenue — as traffi c
signals remained unpowered
throughout the night.
“There were so many
accidents,” said Jamie Kaplan,
whose E. 73rd Street
home between avenues L
and M lost power Sunday
evening. “All you saw were
accidents and ambulances
and glass on the fl oor. Everything
was pitch black
and we heard gunshots too.
We constantly heard car
alarms going off.”
Kaplan said she was up
all night soothing her 19-
month-old daughter, Ellie;
the mother wearing her
bathing suit, the daughters
down to diapers — both
drenched in sweat. The
heat was so terrible, she
said, that she preferred the
pitch blackness over lighting
candles.
“She was screaming
until 3 a.m.,” Kaplan said
of her daughter. “We were
dripping, dripping sweat.”
Adding to the surreal
misery of the night, Kaplan
claims that two-inch-long
water bugs fi lled the streets
and invaded their homes
amid the searing heat. Her
discovery that one massive
Transformers were installed last Sunday night in the Flatlands, one of several southern Brooklyn
neighborhoods affected by the blackout. Steve Solomonson
insect had crawled into her
daughter’s crib was the low
point of an already grim
evening.
“I took my fl ashlight
and phone to get her stuffed
animal, and there was this
huge mofo running around
in her crib,” said Kaplan. “I
can’t live like that.”
Many residents fl ed
their homes to take refuge
in their vehicles, basking
in the gas-powered air conditioning,
desperate for relief
and a few hours sleep.
“It was a nightmare
man, it was a nightmare all
night,” said Ricky Zawacki,
another E. 73rd Street resident.
“I wasn’t able to sleep.
It was atrocious. I had to
stay in my mom’s car with
the AC on.”
Zawacki, who said
power to his block was restored
at 11:26 a.m. Monday
morning — an interminable
16 hours following the
blackout’s 7 p.m. start —
was furious to learn that a
power outage in Manhattan
had been corrected after
only six hours.
“How does it take six
hours to reapply electricity
to half of Manhattan
— which is huge — but
where we live it takes another
16 hours?” Zawacki
railed. “What kind of
b------- is that?”
While each of the fi ve
boroughs were affected by
the blackout, Brooklyn residents
suffered the most,
according to Councilman
Chaim Deutsch, who represents
Sheepshead Bay and
other areas who were affected
by the blackout.
“Although my district
was fortunate to be minimally
impacted by power
outages these past few
days, Brooklyn as a whole
was hardest hit,” he said.
“New Yorkers deserve reliable
electrical service, and
quick restoration when
there is unavoidable equipment
failure... It is unacceptable
that right now,
more than 12 hours after
the heat wave broke, there
are still thousands without
power.”
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes,
who represents
areas where ConEd decided
to shut off the power,
blasted the energy company
for their handling of
the situation.
“Many residents, including
seniors, have been
put in an unsafe situation
because the power company
that they relied on
failed. As a matter of public
health and safety, it simply
cannot be the norm that
the grid malfunctions during
the hottest months,”
Gounardes said. “Con Edison
has a responsibility
to its customers to ensure
no one has their electricity
turned off for hours in
extreme heat. This was
not an unforeseeable circumstance.
ConEd should
have been more prepared
and must restore power to
the affected areas immediately.
This cannot happen
again.”
The outage affected
traffic signals in southern
Brooklyn as well,
though Mayor Bill de Blasio
said that most have
been restored as of Monday
morning.
De Blasio blasted ConEd
at a press conference in
Mill Basin on Monday for
its refusal to provide a
substantial explanation of
what caused the latest debacle.
“I’m calling for a full
investigation and further
that we examine whether
we need a new entity to
handle this situation going
forward. Because at this
point I do not have faith in
ConEd... They’re not doing
their job and they’re not
giving real answers. Is it
now time to do something
different.”
Residents gather outside of 245 Hawthorne St. on Tuesday,
demanding Con Edison to restore power to apartment units.
Chandler Kidd
PLG residents peeved
over lack of service
BY CHANDLER KIDD
Some Prospect-Lefferts
Gardens residents remained
in the dark three
days after Con Edison intentionally
cut power to
certain parts of the borough,
and one local lawmaker
is accusing the utility
provider of stripping
energy from communities
of color in order to keep
white customers cool.
“It is only in communities
that look like ours that
this is acceptable,” state
Sen. Zelnor Myrie said.
“We want the problem
fi xed now.”
The energy company
cut the power to southern
Brooklyn neighborhoods
— including Canarsie,
Marine Park, Mill Basin
and parts of Flatbush — at
around 8:30 p.m. on Sunday,
claiming the deliberate
blackout was necessary
to prevent damage
to the grid during a heat
wave that struck the city.
However, because Prospect
Lefferts Garden residents
residing on Hawthorne
Street are tied into
Canarsie’s power grid,
the decision to shut off
the lights in the southern
Brooklyn neighborhood
also affected their neighbors
up north, according
to Assemblywoman Diana
Richardson, who relayed
information provided by
the utility company at a
public meeting Tuesday.
At the gathering, Richardson
claimed that hundreds
of Hawthorne Street
dwellers remained without
juice as of Tuesday night,
despite ConEd’s claim that
power had been restored to
all but one building along
the thoroughfare.
“Currently on this
block we have roughly 300
to 500 people, and I dare to
say even more residents,
who are currently affected,”
Richardson said
Tuesday afternoon.
A ConEd spokesman
said preemptively cutting
power was the best option
at the time, as an outage
was inevitable.
“The residents where
we had to cut service during
the heat wave were going
to lose power regardless
of whether we took
action or not,” Robert Mc-
Gee said. “They were being
served by electrical
lines that were failing under
the extreme heat and
power demand. The preemptive
service disruption
allowed us to restore those
customers quicker than if
we had done nothing. We
regret the distress caused
to our customers.”
The power outage rendered
air conditioners and
refrigerators barely functioning
along the street,
and Myrie said that inoperable
elevators stranded
elderly Hawthorne Street
residents in their buildings,
cutting them off from
desperately need prescription
refi lls and doctor appointments.
One senior Hawthorne
Street resident, Legia Argentin,
has lived with only
one working light in her
apartment since the blackout
started.
The energy company
has managed to restore
service to more than
30,000 Brooklyn customers
who lost power during
the initial blackout.
‘It was a nightmare’
Thousands lose power during weekend heatwave