Results tagged “conedceokevinburke”

On Tuesday, a Con Ed executive faced a number of irritated City Council members seeking answers about the July 18 steam pipe explosion in Midtown. Senior vice president William Longhi said that the investigation could take another two or three months, but City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, "You may not have all the answers and all the Ts crossed and all the Is dotted. I can accept that. But I cannot accept that you have absolutely nothing to tell us about why this may have happened.

Well, there's nothing like having a barely-one-hour blackout on a sultry weekday to make you consider stocking up on flashlights, batteries, water, and maybe a Go Bag. Con Ed is still investigating the cause of yesterday's brief power failure to parts of the Bronx and Manhattan; Newsday reported "the blackout was caused when breakers opened at an Astoria substation and cut off power to stations servicing Yorkville and parts of the Bronx." It's unclear why the breakers were opened in the first place.

Queens Assemblyman Michael Gianaris accused Con Ed of placing its own PR needs above basic needs of customers. Gianaris says that the utility spent over a half million dollars to shore up its image after last summer's Queens blackout. He argues that money should have gone towards increasing reimbursements to businesses, whose reimbursements were capped at $7,000.

The Office of Emergency Management has decided to stop relying on Con Ed-supplied information on power outages, after the July Queens blackout mess that affected about 300,000. OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno said that the fact that Con Ed said only 1700 customers were without power on July 20, later raising it to 25,000 customers (and customers equal entire buildings, with indeterminate number of people in them), was cause for the city to start sending canvassers on the street to get better estimates. The "Power Outage Response Team" will be made up of NYPD, FDNY, and other city officials. Comissioner Bruno said, "We have never seen Con Ed be off by a factor of 10, as we’ve seen here... We are no longer accepting those [Con Ed] numbers as we had for years."

- City Councilman Eric Gioia wondered, "You're telling me the only way to find out is for the customer to call up but you don't have the capacity to receive the phone call, and what you're trying to do is do some calculus based on how long people took to hang up the telephone. It seems like this is an exercise in absurdity." (NY1)Queens City Council members and Senator Charles Schumer are asking Con Ed to lift the $7,000 reimbursement cap for businesses.

On page B7 of today's NY Times, Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke has a letter to the residents of northwest Queens. We've put the letter up in parts - has anyone else seen this ad in other city papers? Clearly not on a "Dear" basis, Burke tells residents he's aware of their hardship, acknowledges their patience and says that Con Ed will "strive to restore" residents' trust in the Con Ed. He also emphasizes the role Con Ed employees play, thanks various city agencies for their help, and says they will "find out what caused this extraordinary series of events in our system."

At 4AM this morning, Con Ed said that most of Queens had its power. About one hundred or so customers are still without power and "some restored customers may experience lower than normal voltage conditions or sporadic outages as crews reinforce the area’s power cable system" (or power being totally knocked out again), but other than that, things are sort of back to normal. Which means the lawsuits can begin: The mother of a feverish 2 year old is suing because the hospital told her to feed cool drinks and ice cream to bring down the 102 fever, but with the blackout, that couldn't happen!

- On being President: Spitzer doesn't want to be, while Suozzi does (to which Spitzer cracked, "Good luck")There was also a supposed freak-out by Spitzer when he saw that Suozzi was going to bring notes on stage during the debate. Notes are not allowed, and Suozzi told reporters that Spitzer got "angrier and angrier and angrier" and accused him of "playing games," but let's face it, if notes weren't even allowed...

After a week of being powerless or near powerless, thousands of Queens homes and businesses are starting to power back up, but it almost feels like too little, too late. It's already been a week of no food, no hot water and no business for many people, and one family blames the death of a 60 year old father on the blackout. Politicians are also fuming: They want Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke to resign, pissed that Burke minimized the blackout as an "inconvenience," and for Governor Pataki to designate Queens a disaster area. Representative Joseph Crowley said during a press conference, "If this were an area of 100,000 people in upstate New York, the governor would have declared it a disaster area." No kidding.