Mayor Bloomberg issued a heat emergency for the city as it braces itself for the century mark, temperature-wise. The last time the city had 100-degree weather was in August 2001. The city is urging residents to conserve electricity, and City Councilman provided heat of another kind as they grilled Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke over the Queens blackout. Some bits from the hearing:
- Though the average age of feeder cables for the area was younger than more- one was over 50 years old (NY Times and Metro)
- Burke is worried that Queens could face another blackout, saying "There is a higher risk [of a blackout] in the Long Island City network because of the stress that network was under and that's why we're doing more work there" (Daily News)
- Burke admitted, "I don’t think anybody should be thanking me personally.” (NY Times)
- 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.
Some heat stats from the NY Post and the Daily News points out the $13 million donated to NY State politicians from power companie. And the NY Times has a good timeline of events and feeder cable outages during the Queens blackout. We really don't want to see a graphic like this for the whole of the city, so we're unplugging out lights and unnecessary appliances before we head to work. And even big companies and office buildings are trying to conserve (the new 2006 phobia is electrical blackouts!).
Photograph from goggla on Flickr
