The famous quotation from the movie Network—“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,”—has now been transformed by three storms (Sandy, Athena, and a “storm” of criticism) into the question, “We’re boiling mad but are we going to take it forevermore?”
The boiling point of water is 212 degrees F., which leads me to a second question: What is the boiling point of more than a million New Yorkers who live on four pieces of land completely surrounded by water—namely, the islands of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), Staten Island, Manhattan, and the City of Long Beach, when they have had no electricity for two weeks (although it seems like millennia)?
Sorry, Coney, but you’re not a true island due to your physical attachment to Brooklyn. Sorry, Bronx, but you’re “mainland” due to your literal attachment to Westchester. Sorry, Rockaways, but you’re only a peninsula, since you’re not completely surrounded by water due to your geographical connection to Nassau County.
I’m hopeful that the answer to the first question is that we’re not going to take it anymore; and I base this optimism partially on Governor Cuomo’s threat that he’s going to hold LIPA accountable for their proven inadequacy in responding to both Irene and Sandy.
As to what our exact boiling mad point is, I’d say it was hour number 212 without a call-back from LIPA as to an estimated date of restoration of power, since their website promises just such a call-back within 24-36 hours (not days or weeks) after a customer first reports their loss of electricity to them.
Note: I did finally get my power back after 287 hours, and 88 hours after that, I received a call from LIPA informing me that my power was back on.
Richard Siegelman
