Con Ed Takes Heat As Queens Grapples With Lingering Power Losses

QUEENS, NY — More than a hundred Queens households marked their eighth day without power Wednesday, after Tropical Storm Isaias caused outages for tens of thousands of borough residents, according to the latest data from Con Edison.

Of the 76,000 Queens customers who suffered power outages due to Isaias, 115 were still in the dark as of noon Wednesday, according to Con Ed, the city's utility provider.

Another 900-some Queens households were also without electricity Wednesday, but Con Ed spokesperson Jamie McShane said those outages were unrelated to the tropical storm.

Isaias hit New York City the afternoon of Aug. 4, bringing 73 mph winds that knocked over trees and brought down many of the borough's above-ground power lines.

Con Edison President Tim Cawley previously pledged to NY1 that utility workers would fix all New York City's remaining storm-related outages by Monday morning.

The next day, which marked one week since the storm, 3,000 Queens households were still without power, according to Acting Queens Borough President Sharon Lee.

Lee has called Con Ed's storm response "disastrous," arguing that the utility did not devote "the same necessary urgency" to fixing outages in Queens as it did in other boroughs.

Lee and other Queens politicians have since called for Con Ed to offer immediate rebates to residents who lost power.

"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 in a statement.

McShane, the Con Ed spokesperson, declined to comment specifically on the rebate demand. In a statement, he said Isaias was the second worst storm-related outage since Superstorm Sandy and that the "vast majority" of Queens households got power back by Sunday night.

"We are completely focused on restoring power as safely and quickly as possible to every customer," McShane said. "After every major storm event we perform a thorough analysis of what can be improved and we’ll do the same following the second worst storm in the history of our service territory."