Seven days. That’s the latest estimate that PSEG-Long Island is giving for how long some homes and businesses will have to wait for power to be restored after Tropical Storm Isaias.
PSEG-LI previously said it expected to have power restored for all impacted customers by Saturday, but the utility revised that estimate on Friday.
“While we expect the vast majority of customers to be restored by end of day Saturday, we are finding that each job is requiring more work than anticipated due to the extent of the storm’s damage,” PSEG-LI said in a statement. “For example, many of the remaining jobs require multiple stages: tree removal, pole replacement, and restringing wires. While tree trim personnel are embedded with many line crews to maximize efficiency, this type of extensive job can still take a crew half a day and result in only 20 to 40 customers restored.
“This may unfortunately push some restorations to Sunday, with the possibility that a handful of the most extensive jobs may be restored early Monday,” the statement continued.
The storm knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses from New York to North Carolina on Tuesday, according to electric companies. More than 870,000 outages were reported in New York State alone. PSEG-LI reported more than 420,000 homes and businesses — more than a third of its 1.1 million customers on LI — were without power immediately after the storm, which downed about 3,000 trees and limbs across the Island.
More than 103,000 PSEG-LI customers were still in the dark as of sundown Friday.
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