Two-Thirds of Glen Cove Waiting for Power

One-third of Glen Cove residents currently have power, and the city's substation is back online as of Tuesday, according to Mayor Ralph Suozzi.

"All the problems in Glen Cove have been assessed and LIPA's bringing in crews to work on them," Suozzi said Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Suozzi has been participating in two daily conference calls with Long Island Power Authority officials since Huricane Sandy hit Sunday.

He said the company is describing damage that is different than what it faced with Tropical Storm Irene one year ago. Basic infrastructure like major transmission stations and lines and substations were taken offline in preparation for the storm or knocked out by it. Those need to be fixed before anything else can be, according to LIPA chief operating officer Michael Hervey.

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Suozzi said LIPA has told him that Sandy did twice the damage Irene did. A major impediment to restoring power has been the uncertainty of whether downed lines are live, he said. LIPA said they shut down sections of their grid on the south shore in advance of the storm, but "the rest was done by Mother Nature," according to one LIPA official.

That means that as power is restored to substations, connected lines distributed throughout entire areas can suddenly become live with electricity. City crews and others ready to remove trees and debris are subject to serious injury or death if they come into contact with those wires, hence the city's mandate that no crews may work on any debris touching wires that have not been confirmed by LIPA to not have power.

Since LIPA needs debris removed before it can repair damaged lines, the logistics of restoring power become more complicated than just having crews on streets.

Nearly 2,000 extra personnel began arriving Tuesday from out of town, doubling LIPA's regular manpower to a total of more than 3,000.

Of LIPA's 11,361 customers in Glen Cove, 3,022 had power as of Thursday at 7 p.m.

LIPA estimated full restoration will take between six and nine more days.

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