UPDATE: Massapequa Park Mayor Blasts LIPA Storm Response

With thousands still without power in Massapequa Park nearly 24 hours after Hurricane Irene has left the area, Massapequa Park Mayor James Altadonna has become frustrated by LIPA's response.

At last report 4,568 of Massapequa Park's 5,961 customers were without electricity according to LIPA's website , although the number may be lower since the company announced Monday they were only updating the local numbers twice a day.

Altadonna says he hasn't been provided with the number of outages and is not happy with what he's seeing on the ground.

"I'm not pleased by LIPA's response," he said. "They had a great pre-storm public relations campaign but they haven't delivered. I'm very discouraged."

The mayor who's toured the village numerous times since the storm struck early Sunday said on Monday he'd only seen one LIPA truck in Massapequa Park. 

He said he's been in contact with the power company and the response has been "We'll get to you when we get to you."

Altadonna would like to see LIPA give municipalities more updates and information on when power is going to be back on.

"For those in the village who are frustrated, all I can say is I feel your pain, my power is out too," he said.

The mayor said that all of the main and secondary roads in Massapequa Park have been cleared except for the streets where toppled trees have become entangled with wires.

He added that he's willing to have village workers clean up the trees, but they can't do it if the wires aren't moved.

"We'll get the trees up, just get the wires up and tell us we're safe and we'll do our jobs," he said.

LIPA spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said the company is dealing with a massive cleanup throughout all of Long Island.

"Hurricane Irene affected 523,000 coustomers throughout Long Island," she said.

"We've responded on the village level, on the town level, on the county level and on the state level. We're not going to be able to remove all the trees and all the wires at the same time." 

Baird-Streeter said she realised customers were frustrated and said the company was trying to restore power to as many customers as possible as quickly as possible.

As of 4 p.m. Monday LIPA said 345,000 customers were still without power on Long Island.