Jun 27, 2007 7:17 pm US/Eastern
New Yorkers' Faith In Con Ed Running Thin
Will It Be A Long Hot Summer, Like Summer Of 2006?
by Marcia Kramer
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Wednesday's brief power outage raises serious questions about Con Edison's ability to keep the lights on.
And with last summer's blackout fresh on their minds, New Yorkers are warm, wary and worrying about a long hot summer.
CBS 2 HD took their temperature.
"We're actually waiting for a big blackout to happen," said Harry Panagiotopoulos, owner of Igloo Cafe Astoria.
After suffering for nine days without electricity last summer, the owner of the Astoria cafe doesn't put much stock in Con Edison.
"No confidence. No faith. Nothing," Panagiotopoulos said.
And with a handful of customers already suffering outages, many Astoria residents are also skeptical.
"Lately it seems like every little surge creates a huge problem," one resident said.
"I'm scared," added another.
"Help us," said another.
"I think anyone walking the streets of this neighborhood would b extremely cynical about Con Edison," Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, D-Queens, said.
Gianaris is also worried about other neighborhoods with operating equipment as vulnerable as Astoria's was last summer. The list includes the West Bronx, Fordham, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Flatbush, Sheepshead Bay and Jamaica.
"We are now still in June," Gianaris said. "The outage last summer was mid July. We have two and a half to three months of summer yet to come."
Con Ed says its spent $1.4 billion to fix things and is hopeful things will be better.
"The system's in pretty good shape," Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said. "We can never say there will never be an outage, but we can assure New Yorkers we've spent more than $1 billion and we've got 14,000 men and women who have worked to keep the lights on."
So with the first hot days of summer upon us the best you can say about Con Ed is that there are a whole lot of people with their fingers crossed.
Con Ed says if you do have a power problem, be sure to report it by calling 1-800-75-CONED. That's 1-800-752-6633.
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