Print
Aug 22, 2006 8:57 am US/Eastern
Queens Blackout: Hearing Sheds Light On Outage
by Christine Sloan
QUEENS (CBS/AP) ―
-
-
A Con Edison worker repairs an overhead secondary line in Woodside, Queens, on July 24. (AP)
AP
New York City will no longer rely on Con Edison to report blackout information. Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph Bruno told a city council committee today that Con Ed was reporting 1,700 customers without power when more than 25,000 customers - or 100,000 people - were in the dark last month.
For more than a week, Con Ed customers struggled to stay cool during a time when the mercury hit the 100-degree mark. Businesses reported losing thousands of dollars, and some even had to shut down.
Bruno said he's never seen Con Ed "so far off" when counting outages. He said anytime an outage affects 1,000 customers, the city's office of emergency services will dispatch its own team to count outages. He testified for just over two hours.
The City Council's Consumer Affairs and Public Safety Committee held the hearing on what went wrong during the 10-day blackout in northwest Queens. The hearing focused on the emergency response by city agencies as well as how Con Edison reported the blackout. So far 36 deaths in the five boroughs have been attributed to the heat wave that helped trigger the outages in northwest Queens.
Last month the same council committee grilled Con Edison CEO Kevin Burke for his company's miscalculation of how many of its customers were affected.
During that hearing, Con Ed Chairman Kevin Burke was questioned about why it took the utility company four days to figure out that 100,000 people had no power.
Council members also asked him why the utility company was giving so little in reimbursements to people who lost so much.
Watch Crisis In Queens: A CBS 2/wcbstv.com Town Hall...What Went Wrong?
Are You A Victim Of The Crisis In Queens? Learn How To Complain So It Counts, And Get A Claim Form So You Can Get Reimbursed For Your Losses
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
