100K NYC Customers Remain Without Power After Isaias: ConEd

NEW YORK CITY — Tropical Storm Isaias passed through New York City in a matter of hours, but it could take days for some city dwellers to get their power back.

Roughly 100,000 Con Edison customers in New York City remained without power Wednesday morning. An outage map for customers gives the same estimated time of restoration: "evaluating condition."

The power company told customers in a statement that they could be in for a long wait.

"The company has already restored service to more than 48,000 customers," ConEd wrote in the statement. "But it is clear the restoration of all customers will take multiple days."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday issued a statement excoriating Con Edison's and other utilities' response to the storm. He said he directed the state's Department of Public Service to investigate.

"The large volume of outages and the utilities' failure to communicate with customers in real time proves they did not live up to their legal obligations," Cuomo said. "The fact that many customers still do not know when their power will be restored makes it even more unacceptable."

About 257,000 Con Edison customers lost power in the storm — the second-largest "storm-related" outage in its history, only behind the 1.1 million left powerless by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, according to the company.

Queens, with 45,000, had the most customers without power on Tuesday, according to the company. Brooklyn and the Bronx had 16,000 and 23,000 customers, respectively.

But it was Staten Island that suffered the biggest proportion of customers without power. Soon after the storm passed, about 20 percent of Staten Island customers were without power.

Staten Island had 29,000 customers without power on Tuesday, although the company quickly shaved that number down to 21,000 the following morning.