Utilities Making Progress at Restoring Power
The U.S. Department of Energy's 10th update since Hurricane Sandy made landfall shows 3.6 million customers still without electricity as of 9 am EDT Nov. 2, down from 4.4 million the day before.
The lights and appliances of thousands of consumers in each of five states -– New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Connecticut -– remained off as of 9 a.m. Nov. 2, but the series of updates posted by the U.S. Department of Energy indicate utilities are making good progress at restoring power. The early Nov. 2 update, Hurricane Sandy Situation Report #10, tenth in the series since Hurricane Sandy made landfall Oct. 29, shows 3.6 million customers were still without electricity as of 9 a.m. EDT Nov. 2, down from 4.4 million the day before and 8.2 million at the peak of power outages associated with the big storm.
However, this report also says some utilities serving New York state residents estimate all of their customers will not have power restored until Nov. 7 or even the weekend of Nov. 10-11 (Consolidated Edison, Con Ed, is one citing that weekend). One of these utilities, Central Hudson, identified more than 170 broken poles and 1,100 instances of downed wires and is deploying 700 employee line workers, contractors, and mutual aid crews from Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin to repair them, it states.
The update (http://www.oe.netl.doe.gov/docs/2012_SitRep10_Sandy_11022012_1000AM.pdf) also lists the current operating status of nuclear power plants, pipelines, fuel terminals, and refineries in the affected states.