Mayor Bill de Blasio surveyed storm damage in Astoria Tuesday (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Aug. 6, 2020 By Allie Griffin
More than 35,000 Queens homes are still without power two days after Tropical Storm Isaias toppled trees and took down wires across the borough — and some residents won’t get their power restored for another four days.
Queens had the greatest number of households that lost power among the five boroughs. The storm shut the power of more than 46,000 Con Edison customers in Queens.
Some of the customers will not have power restored until Sunday at 11 p.m., according to the Con Edison outage map.
“Thousands of New Yorkers are suffering right now because the power is still not back on,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said this morning.
In total, 180,000 households in New York City lost power as a result of the storm. There are about 70,000 households across the boroughs who have yet to get their power back on.
De Blasio has been pushing Con Edison to restore power sooner and has enlisted city workers to help clear fallen trees and other debris, he said.
“Originally Con Ed had said that they were going to need until Sunday and I think that was very distressing to lots of New Yorkers,” de Blasio said. “Who wants to wait that long?”
The mayor has pressured the company to speed up its efforts and said more than half of the outstanding households will have power restored by tomorrow.
Con Edison will work to restore between 15,000 and 20,000 customers today and another 15,000 to 20,000 customers tomorrow across the city, he added.
The company’s outage map says that the power will be restored in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx by no later than Sunday. Manhattan was largely unaffected by the storm.
Glendale Council Member Robert Holden said the delay in restoring power was “totally unacceptable” and called on President Donald Trump to send federal assistance.
.@realDonaldTrump, we need your help here. We need @fema to declare a state of emergency and assist in getting power restored. We’ve heard nothing but radio silence from @NYGovCuomo and @NYCMayor. Bring in the feds! (2/2)
— Robert Holden (@BobHoldenNYC) August 5, 2020
According to Con Edison outage data, there are 14,930 households in Jamaica; 9,279 households in Richmond Hill; 6,377 households in Flushing; 2,415 households in Rego Park and 2,368 households in Maspeth without power at the time of publication.
Queens also had the highest number of fallen trees in New York City as winds from Isaias gusted up to 70 miles per hour. The City Parks Department received over 9,000 reports of downed trees in the borough, according to amNewYork.
A tree in Briarwood was blown over by the heavy winds and fell onto a car Tuesday, killing a 60-year-old man who was sitting inside.
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5 Comments
Meanwhile in Beirut people are cleaning up their streets while we sit and complain on social media and by calling 311.
Trees are the city’s responsibility. Residents are not allowed to prune them or chop down. There’s a huge fine (up to $15K) if you do.
Calling 311 is the appropriate way to report a downed tree or unsafe branch. That way it gets logged (no pun intended). You can also call your city councilperson’s office to log your complaint.
Hey watcher, what about trees that make a mess on sidewalk then city ticketing home owners for sidewalk issues. Prune or fix the trees or get rid of them. City doesn’t care every year millions of damage.
Do we really need to wait for horn beetle to kill the trees?
Maybe we can get POTUS to go throw rolls of paper towels as relief!
All I got to say this was not even a real storm ? and once again they failed to respond in a timely matter and the parks department has failed once again to remove the trees from roadways and sidewalks leaving the disabled with nowhere to go.