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Powerful Winds And Heavy Rain Leave Thousands Without Power On Christmas Morning
By
Sydney Pereira
Published Dec 25, 2020
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Jake Offenhartz/Gothamist
By
Sydney Pereira
Published Dec 25, 2020
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Heavy rain and wind knocked out power for thousands in New York and New Jersey on Christmas morning.
About 35,000 households were still out of power across New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and New Jersey on Friday morning just before 11 a.m., according to outages maps from ConEdison and PSEG in New Jersey and Long Island.
Con Edison, which is the power company for NYC and Westchester County, saw 22,000 customers lose electricity in total. By 4 a.m., service was restored to about 6,000 customers.
About 9,000 customers had no power in Westchester, with thousands more without power scattered across Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens, and several hundred in Brooklyn.
"The powerful, gusting winds ... caused trees and branches to fall onto overhead delivery equipment, resulting in customer outages," a Con Ed press release says.
The company urged passersby to avoid downed wires, which could still be live.
Outages were worst in Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Cortlandt and Rye and in the northern parts of Staten Island, the company said. The winds also left damage in NYC: The winds left some damage in NYC:
Governor Andrew Cuomo deployed the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to prep for possible flooding from a mix of snowmelt and rain in the Souther Tier, Mid-Hudson and Capital regions.
"Rain and warm temperatures have already moved into much of the state, and with so much snow still on the ground, there is a very real chance some areas may see flooding on Christmas morning," Cuomo said in a statement on Thursday.
Spectrum and Optimum were preparing for potential outages in the northeast from the storms on Thursday and Friday.
Spectrum showed no current service outages just before 11 a.m. But various complaints about outages to both Spectrum and Optimum were rolling in on social media on Thursday and Friday.
A spokesperson for Optimum, Ashwin Bhandari, said in a statement: "There are currently no major outages affecting the Optimum network at this time."
"Due to the severe weather that passed through the New York Tri-State area overnight, a small percentage of Optimum customers may be experiencing a loss of service which is primarily related to commercial power outages," Bhandari added. "Our crews and field teams are coordinating closely with local power companies and are currently in the field assessing any storm-related damage to our network and making repairs to restore service to those affected customers as quickly as possible."
Spectrum spokesperson John Bonomo said most services outages were related to the power outages, and there were no widespread issues.
This article has been updated with a statement from Optimum and Spectrum.
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Sydney Pereira
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