By Hank Russell
PSEG Long Island has announced that power has been restored to its customers after a powerful storm ripped through Long Island on July 4. The announcement was made on July 6 at 9:45 p.m.
Tree crews have dealt with nearly 400 downed trees and nearly 320 fallen limbs.
Currently, fewer than 2,000 of 1.2 million electric customers across Long Island and the Rockaways are affected. While outages are scattered across the service area, eastern Suffolk County was the hardest hit.
According to PSEG LI, this overall storm had three distinct phases:
- July 1-4: Extreme heat, with real feel temperatures well above 100 degrees for much of Long Island on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The system held up well, with approximately 20,000 customers affected, less than 2% of those served by PSEG Long Island. For those who were impacted, the average restoration time was less than two hours.
- July 4: Evening thunderstorms with hurricane-force wind gusts. Winds of over 80 miles per hour swept through portions of the service area, downing approximately 400 trees, hundreds of limbs and causing other damage that impacted approximately 32,000 customers. All of those customers affected on July 4 had service restored by Monday night.
- July 5-6: Ongoing storms with heavy rain causing flooding and state of emergency declarations in Nassau and Suffolk counties. This has caused outages to approximately 15,000 customers, with more rain possible overnight. Our crews are working through them and have fewer than 2,000 customers remaining without power.
“Through it all, our crews and supporting teams have worked 16-hour shifts every day,” PSEG LI said in a statement. “We greatly appreciate their efforts to restore service as quickly and safely as possible in incredibly challenging conditions — and the understanding of our customers.”
Information about PSEG Long Island’s restoration process is available here.