11 days without power, Sandy victims want answers
Living through another night of possibly freezing temperatures, Michael Pineda, fifteen months old, stands bundled up near a battery-operated lantern in his home without power or heat in the Rockaway Park neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012, in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. / AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
Last Updated 12:44 p.m. ET
Eleven days after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, hundreds of thousands of utility customers in New York and New Jersey are still without power - and they want answers.
Battered Northeast losing its patience
Unfortunately, the answers provided by the power companies have generated even more anger and frustration.
When asked Thursday night when power may be restored, LIPA Chief Operating Officer Michael Hervey told CBS Station WCBS the utility is aiming for the middle of next week. WCBS reports one spokesman suggested power may not be fully restored until Thanksgiving.
On Friday LIPA reported 163,029 customers in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and the Rockaway Peninsula were still without power. That figure includes thousands who had lost power in this week's nor'easter, many of whom have had service restored. Families, the elderly and the disabled have no heat or electricity.
Customers have complained not only about the pace of work being done on Long Island but also about poor communications between LIPA and the public.
In Great Neck, many still don't have power. "Where are the boots on the ground? We keep hearing that there's added crew, there are so many people working. We're not seeing them," Nassau County Legislator Judi Bosworth told WCBS.
Bosworth also complained about LIPA's communication on the crisis. "They can't tell us if we'll have power in two days, in three days, in a week, in two weeks," she said.
Babylon Town Supervisor Richard Schaffer described the situation as "mass chaos."
Below: Watch WCBS's Jennifer McLogan report on the frustrations of Long Islanders still without power.
On Friday LIPA COO Hervey said the utility lost two days of progress in the restoration because of damage and further outages caused by the nor'easter.
Wednesday's storm caused more than 120,000 outages, by Hervey said power to half of those customers has been restored.
"It was fairly devastating," Hervey said.
The utility also said it has more than 14,000 workers dedicated to the restoration effort, including more than 8,200 field crews from across the country and Canada - and another 1,200 linemen are expected to join the effort today.
- Nor'easter "icing on the cake" for devastated Staten Island
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Many Long Islanders went to the Island Park FEMA Center Thursday night for food and supplies, but Elyse Schwartz of Oceanside told WCBS she and her two kids needed a place to stay.
"It's a nightmare, and I'm just living each minute. We don't know what's gonna happen the next minute," Schwartz said.
At the Merrick Library, which is being used as a warming center, Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano got an earful from frustrated homeowners on Thursday.
Homeowner Richard Feldman called the recovery effort a failure. "There are tens of thousands of people out there, like me, with no home," Feldman said.
Tempers flared when Mangano tried to explain that LIPA is controlled by the state, not the county.
"So where is the state representative that is demanding LIPA give some answers to people? Where have they been for 11 days?" one woman asked.
"I share your frustration," Mangano said - to which the woman quickly replied, "You have power in your house, you don't share my frustration."
- FEMA housing moving into place for Sandy victims
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- NYC, Long Island to start rationing gasoline as state's Sandy damage could hit $33B
- Some hard-hit NY areas disappear from outage map
- Lights in lower Manhattan, misery in outer regions
Customers were further angered by word that homeowners living in Long Island's flood zone - from the Moriches to the Rockaways - were told by LIPA they need an electrician to certify it is safe to turn the power back on before the utility will restore service - even for homes that suffered no water damage, CBS correspondent Jennifer McLogan reported.
"I was told now that if you don't get that certificate that LIPA's going to come around and take your meter off your house, and then you'll have to pay a licensed electrician to come back and give you a new meter," Oceanside homeowner Renato Scaglione said.
New York Newsday now reports that two county executives on Long Island - Mangano and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone - announced that LIPA will scrap its policy requiring homeowners obtain new electrical evaluations before they can get their power turned back on.
Sandy's devastation on Staten Island
Newsday also reports LIPA has been criticized for failing to implement recommendations made in a 2006 report that may have better prepared the utility for the massive storm.
Plainview resident Al Gerstein told WCBS that his housing development lost power at 6 p.m. on Oct. 29, and has been in the dark ever since.
"We have called every elected official in the area, we filed a formal complaint with the public service commission, no one is getting back to us," Gerstein said. "LIPA has a recording on with no information concerning our area. We have not gotten one answer. It's been a disaster."
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has demanded investigations of utilities that aren't working quickly enough. He called LIPA archaic and in need of an immediate overhaul.
"We paid them and we gave them a franchise because they represented themselves as experts in doing this and they failed - and they should be held accountable for their failure," Cuomo said.
Cuomo said the region will need a long-term recovery plan, but many residents said they only worry about where they will sleep, or their next meal.
Residents said they are at the end of their ropes.
"I'm very frustrated. We have no electricity. I haven't seen one LIPA truck, no help from everyone. I can't believe this is America. This is the richest country in the world and we help everybody. Where is everybody to help us?" Esther Ackerman of Oceanside told WCBS correspondent Dick Brennan.
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Before I make my point I want to take a second to note my union credentials for you, hopefully this will be enough for you give what I say a little credibility.
At twenty-two years old, my grandfather was both president of a local that represented nearly five-hundred coal miner,s as well as being an officer in the larger union. During labor disputes he and his miners were beaten and shot at by State Police officers, resulting in the deaths of more than a just a few miners. During one union-called strike he and the other union officers were jailed for months on trumped-up charges in an attempt to break the union (Over fifty years later they were issued an official apology by the court, exonerated of all charges, and had any record relating to the charges removed from their records.) Ultimately two of his close friends, who were also union officers, were murdered as a result of their union activities.
My dad was a long-time delegate for one of the utility company unions mentioned in these stories.
I was a career civil servant and union member. As a result of activities in support of my union I was one of several employees singled out for disciplinary action. My union spent over thirty-five-thousand dollars on legal fees in my defense alone. (and that was in 1990's dollars).
Having said all that, these anti-union stories are nonsense. While this one group was allegedly being turned away on Island Beach because they were non-union workers, there were non-union utility from out of state less than a mile away assisting the utility company clear damaged lines and poles as well as assisting in other ways with the overall restoration effort.
If I had to guess how this whole story got started...well, let me just say this; there's a shirt I see people wearing every now and then that says, "New Jersey, Only The Strong Survive" On that note, I might be able to imagine a scenario where some terrified hayseed from out of state, someone who watched too many episodes of the Sopranos for their own good, arrives in NJ and approaches the first utility worker he sees from JCP&L or PSE&G, whispers to them that he's a non-union worker and asks them if, because of this, he should be worried about the mafia (which his regional accent makes it sound like he's saying "May-Fee-Uh)" In that case I'm not saying it would be impossible to imagine the guys from Jersey finding it so freaking funny it could compel them to viciously bust his balls and tell him a story about an out-of-state non union worker just like him who came to Jersey during a previous storm was never seen again after two shady looking guys were seen carrying a rolled up carpet out of his hotel room.
Do I think the whole story was the result of a few totally freaked out guys who were scared out of their minds by things they were told by union utility guys in Jersey. I'm not saying it's not a possibility. My question is: how could anyone be expected not to do the same thing to them if they had the chance. In Jersey, doing something like that is considered nothing more than good clean fun.
Check the story out yourself on either WAFF.com or CBS News. The event happened on Friday, the same week as the storm, not last Friday, in case you are referring to the timeline. Furthermore, you are not basing your claim on anything factual, just something you want to believe.
NY/NJ contribute to one-fifth of the national GDP, that's 20% of the whole country, just from two states!
In nearly every other state, one of the best arguments an incumbent politician can make by way of demonstrating to their constituency that they are deserving of re-election goes something like this, "During my time in Congress, our state has received $1.87 in benefits and spending from the federal government for every $1.00 in taxes that we send to Washington."
In NJ/NY an incumbent would get a standing ovation if they announced that, during their term in office they were able to bring us to a point where we now got back 60 cents back for every dollar we sent.
And if anyone from another state is considering bashing the Post-Sandy spending of the federal government here, for the record:
-The federal government sends NJ, or spends here, a total of 55 cents for every dollar in taxes that we send to Washington.
-As Zimbahl so aptly points out, this leads to the far more common situation, in which states like New Mexico receive two dollars in federal spending for every dollar of tax revenue they provide.
I just used NJ as the example; the situation is the same in regards to NY as well.
And I want to reiterate that I'm not complaining about this disparity. I'm a Jersey guy, I was raised to believe it is nothing more than a common curtesy to provide this type of information if it might serve to prevent someone from making a comment that will result in them going to bed that night with far fewer teeth than they woke up with that morning.
Thank you for breaking that down for us. I learned much myself, reading your piece.
Please thank your grandfather and father for me, and you for standing up for the rights of workers.
Late Friday at a press conference, Hardin said the documents actually came from Electric Cities of Alabama, a coalition of the state's municipally owned utilities.
Bottom line, it appears now that Decatur Utilities wrongly assumed they would have to agree to the union contract before traveling to New Jersey to help with recovery efforts. The IBEW said in times of crisis, help is welcomed from union and non-union utility workers.
Hardin said as they waited for confirmation on the documents, crews received word that Seaside Heights had received the assistance they needed from other sources.
"At this stage, it is not clear who is alleged to have turned the crew away and the company that employs the affected workers has denied the claim," said IBEW President Ed Hill in a statement. "IBEW local leaders in New Jersey have reiterated what has been the long standing record of our union - in times of crisis all help is welcome and we pull together with everyone to meet the needs of the public. We have communicated this to the office of New Jersey Governor Christie as well."
Sucks to be in a unnecessarily prolonged war on the other side of the planet, doesn't it? Same as Katrina in this respect.
I just wanted to say you sentiment is very much appreciated and, from what I have experienced first hand during nearly two-weeks of dealing with the aftermath of the storm on daily basis, is that all of the insults and anger you see expressed in places such as this are nearly nonexistent out on the street. I should qualify that by saying my comment is limited to a lack of anger and hostility expressed by one person and aimed directly at another, not that which is directed by someone towards particular government agency or utility company. One of my favorite ways to blow off steam since the storm is tweaking the idiots that that tend to pop up during times such as we are now experiencing as they add their two-cents in places like this.
Go back and read some of my earlier posts on this... I warned everybody in New Jersey and New York what was coming... Without electricity civilization shuts down for the most part. Most folks can't EAT and most folks can't go get gas, use the ATM, or buy food at the supermarket or from fast food restaurants for that matter... Without electricity none of the devices critical to provide these services work and the shops can't open. And land based - telecommunications don't work which is critical for the ATMs even if they DO have power. Most city people have no way of cooking without electricity. Here are my proposed solutions: