90K Still Without Power In NYC, Cuomo Blasts ConEd

NEW YORK CITY – Nearly 90,000 New Yorkers were still without power Wednesday afternoon, more than 24 hours after Tropical Storm Isaias swept through the city downing 2,000 trees and bringing supply lines to the ground.

Con Edison was unable to give customers any indication of when the lights might go back on.

"The company has already restored service to more than 48,000 customers," ConEd wrote in a statement. "But it is clear the restoration of all customers will take multiple days." A note on the utility's website said engineers were still "evaluating condition" as of 2:45 p.m. Wednesday.

The storm took out more than 257,000 Con Edison customers in the state on Tuesday. Early Wednesday 100,000 were still without power, with that number dropping only to 89,000 by 2:45 p.m., when Con Edison's outage tracker was last updated.

Con Edison is one of several utilities that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted Wednesday afternoon, saying the state would investigate their response in the storm's aftermath.

"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."

Other companies in the governor's crosshairs were Verizon, PSEG Long Island, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Orange and Rockland Utilities, and New York State Electric & Gas.

"The large volume of outages and the utilities' failure to communicate with customers in real time proves they did not live up to their legal obligations," Cuomo said. "The fact that many customers still do not know when their power will be restored makes it even more unacceptable."

Con Edison said that the outage in New York state caused by Isaias was the second worst in its history, beaten only by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 when 1.1 million customers were left powerless.