LIPA Halfway To Restoring Power

Long Island Power Authority officials reported Tuesday that they've completed power restoration to about half the customers who lost power as a result of hurricane.

"We have approximately 270,000 customer outages remaining as of this morning ," LIPA chief Michael Hervey said at a morning press briefing. "This reflects over the last 24 hours we've restored about 124,000 customers."

About 523,000 customers initially lost power because of the storm and the company upped the number of problem areas they've found.

After completing about half of  their initial damage assessment on Monday, LIPA said they had found about 750 areas where there had been significant damage in the storm. They're now saying they've found 3,000 areas wtih significant damage. 

"We know that it's very important to restore power as quickly as possible and we've deployed every single asset that's available to do that," Hervey said.

The company has come under criticism by some area elected officials about the restoration job and the company has pledged to start giving out more information.

Currently, LIPA is only updating their website twice a day with a total number of customer outages. Statistics that go into outages in individual localities may be outdated according to spokeswoman. But the company expects to change that soon.

"We've has a high level of information, but not detailed information," Hervey said at the briefing. "But we're in a state now having done our damage assessments where we can give our customers the detailed information about outages that they're used to getting."

Customers will soon be getting automated phone messages regarding the status of outages and estimated restoration times he said.

Hervey also said that local officials should work with county Office of Emergency Management officials to identify problem areas such as major intersections with trees down that should be prioritized.

"Our first priority is the main feeds, getting into because that gets the most customers on the fastest," Hervey said. "But at the same time we have a mechanism set up through the OEMs  to get specific priorities of a road opening or a specific intersection."

The company reported that power has been restored to all hospitals on Long Island.

National Grid's John Bruckner also reported that all of the areas substations are now operational and 46 of the power system's 56 most significant circuits have been restored.