Cuomo Directs State To Investigate Utilities' Isaias Response

NEW YORK STATE — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that he is directing state agencies to begin an investigation into how PSEG Long Island and other utilities responded to Tropical Storm Isaias.

Cuomo said he is directing the state Department of Public Service to launch an investigation into Verizon, PSEG Long Island, Con Edison, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Orange and Rockland Utilities, and New York State Electric & Gas to figure out where they went wrong with service restoration.

"We know that severe weather is our new reality and the reckless disregard by utility companies to adequately plan for tropical storm Isaias left tens of thousands of customers in the dark, literally and figuratively," Cuomo said. "Their performance was unacceptable."

Leaders from across Long Island have condemned PSEG and its response to the storm, which has left hundreds of thousands of people without power and without answers about when it will be restored.

As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, more than 300,000 PSEG Long Island customers were without power, according to the PSEG utage map. That outage map has been slow to update since the storm hit and many residents have said they have had issues with reporting outages.

"It's completely unacceptable that so many residents remain out of power," said Nassau County Executive Laura Curran. "Of course, we expect some of that with a storm. But it's really the information and the difficulty in communicating with PSEG and getting information to PSEG which our residents are finding incredibly frustrating."