4 AUGUST 13, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
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
Local offi cials demand Con Edison off er rebates to
Queens customers who lost power during storm
BY JACOB KAYE
JKAYE@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
With thousands of Con Edison
customers in Queens still
without power a week aft er
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
offi cials 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 off er 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 second-largest outage event in
the company’s history. At its peak,
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
diffi cult task, but leaving thousands
without power nearly a week aft er
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 fi rst. At the end, we’re
working scattered outages, where
there is signifi cant 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 fi xed,’ 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 shift s,
warning people to stay away from
it. However, no one has attempted to
make the fi nal repair.
“It’s just negligence at this point,”
Figueroa said.
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