Queens Pols Bash Response To Tropical Storm Isaias Aftermath

QUEENS, NY — Queens officials bashed Con Edison and the city's emergency management team for what they said was a "disastrous" and "inadequate" response to the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias.

About 27,000 Queens households were still without power Friday afternoon, more than all four other boroughs combined, according to figures from Con Edison, the city's energy provider.

Many of those families aren't expected to get electricity back until Sunday night, according to the utility's current estimates.

For some "smaller groups of customers," Con Ed said in a statement Friday, the lights won't turn back on until early next week.

“We know how difficult living without power is," Matthew Ketschke, Con Ed's senior vice president of customer energy solutions, said. That’s why we’re working around the clock until all customers affected by the storm are safely back in service."

We understand your frustration in this difficult time, but please know that we are working as quickly as we can to safely restore power to all customers. We anticipate we will finish restoring power to the vast majority of customers by Sunday night. https://t.co/TDJFg6dpZb pic.twitter.com/PskWbWcZNE
— Con Edison (@ConEdison) August 6, 2020

Isaias knocked out power for 73,000 families in Queens when it arrived in New York City on Tuesday, as winds as strong as 73 mph brought trees and debris crashing down onto power lines.

"Power is essential, and the restoration of power especially after a storm is a race against time for safety, public confidence and the preservation of livelihoods," Acting Queens Borough President Sharon Lee said Friday. "In this race, Con Ed has utterly and spectacularly failed Queens."

Lee said Con Ed failed to devote "the same necessary urgency" to restoring power in Queens as it did in other boroughs.

Staten Island, which saw the second-most outages from the storm, had 57,000 outages, according to Con Ed. Fewer than 7,000 households were still waiting Friday for the lights to come back on.

After the storm, Queens also had the most reports of fallen trees, often the culprit of power outages.

Queens accounted for 9,681 reports of downed trees to the city's 311 hotline, but only a third of those have been reviewed and only 128 completed, according to City Council Member Bob Holden, who represents thousands of Queens residents still without power.

Just 25 crews of about two to three people each are working in Queens to remove downed trees, NYC Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell told Holden during a briefing call Thursday, though the agency is bringing in 25 additional crews from elsewhere in the state.

“Having only 25 crews ready to address fallen trees in the hardest hit borough after this storm is woefully inadequate,” Holden said. “Mayor de Blasio was only concerned about protecting Manhattan from floods that never came."