One Week After Isaias, Long Island Residents Still Struggling

LINDENHURST, NY — After Tropical Storm Isaias hit Long Island last week, many struggled with no power for days. As of Monday — six days after the storm hit — 18,995 residents in Suffolk County were still without power and it is not expected to be restored until Tuesday night.

One local woman, who asked to remain anonymous, says her mother, a Lindenhurst resident who lives on Allegheny Avenue, was left without power until Sunday afternoon. The 85-year-old first lost power around 2 p.m. Tuesday.

"PSEG kept giving us hope everyday that by the end of the following end of day she would have power," the woman told Patch.

While her mother finally got power around 1 p.m. Sunday, the woman said she still doesn't think the PSEG crews are done restoring power in the area since there are some downed wires, including one on her neighbor's lawn right next door. The wire was left hanging on the lawn from the pole on Sunday.

The woman says she emailed PSEG four to five times before her mother's power was restored, and that each time they answered, a representative told her it should be restored another day.

In addition to the downed wires, there are also downed trees in the area. On Thursday night, PSEG said about 85 percent of its customers would have power restored by the end of the day Friday, with the reminder back up by Saturday. That timeline has been pushed back several times since then and by noon Sunday, PSEG still had not restored power to 85 percent of the 420,000 customers impacted by the storm.

"She couldn't shower all week because she couldn't get hot water, couldn't cook or heat anything to eat so it was a lot of take out," the woman said. "She lost a few hundred dollars in food between her fridge and meats and frozen things in her freezer. There was no air in her apartment and with the block being pitch-black, she was afraid to sleep with the windows open. She's 85 years old. I think PSEG could have been a little more caring about the elderly instead of giving false hope of the time frame for the electricity."

Several local officials have called on PSEG to reimburse customers who were affected by the outage and to not raise rates to pay for the recovery efforts. The officials want PSEG to pay customers for the time their power was out and reimburse the costs of food and medication they may have spoiled because of the outage.

"My mom said in all her life had she never gone through as much as she did this time," the woman said.