HICKSVILLE, N.Y. — Two weeks after Superstorm Sandy, while most utilities have restored electricity to nearly all their customers, there was one glaring exception Monday: a Long Island power company with more outages — almost 60,000 Monday — than all the others combined.
As people on Long Island fumed over the cold and the darkness and complained that they couldn’t get answers from the company, the Long Island Power Authority said in its defense that the storm was worse than anyone could have imagined, and that it didn’t just damage outdoor electrical lines; it caused flooding that touched home and business breaker boxes.
LIPA also acknowledged that an outdated computer system for keeping customers notified has added to people’s frustration.
But some say the government-run utility should have seen it coming. It was recently criticized in a withering state report for lax preparation ahead of last year’s Tropical Storm Irene and for the 25-year-old computer system used to pinpoint outages and update customers.
“It’s antiquated. I think they’re negligent,” said Phil Glickman, a retired Wall Street executive from South Bellmore who waited 11 days to get electricity back.
LIPA has restored power to nearly 1.1 million homes and offices all together. About 46,000 still waiting for the lights to come back on are along Long Island’s south shore and Rockaway Peninsula and had water damage to electrical panels and wiring, so their service can’t be restored without an inspection and possibly repairs. The utility said it expects to restore service to the last 11,000 customers outside flooded areas by late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
At its peak, the storm knocked out power to 8.5 million customers in 10 states. Those outages have been nearly erased, though Consolidated Edison, the chief utility in New York City, has cited problems similar to LIPA’s, saying about 16,300 customers in flooded areas of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island can’t get service until their internal electrical equipment is repaired, tested and certified.
