Jobs well done, mostly

Emergency responders and public officials deserve credit for getting way out in front of last month’s devastating hurricane.

County Executive Ed Mangano, Town Supervisor Kate Murray, village mayors and other elected leaders acted fast, deploying resources and getting out from behind their desks and into their communities to listen to suffering residents and business owners.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state officials were on top of the storm before, during and after the winds blew and the rain fell.

Kudos to local fire departments, the Nassau County Police Department, the county Office of Emergency Management and county, town and village public works personnel who worked constantly and often at great risk to deal with the storm and protect life and property as best they could.

We also thank the journalists — TV, radio and our own Herald staff, who worked over the weekend updating our website, liherald.com — for keeping us warned and informed throughout a rapidly changing situation.

And we applaud all the good neighbors who came to the aid of the people next door and down the block. That’s what “community” is all about.

The Long Island Power Authority has been roundly criticized for not restoring power sooner to the 523,000 customers who lost it when Irene hit. As of 4 p.m. on the Monday after the storm, LIPA had restored electricity to 178,000 of those customers, deploying 2,300 workers to deal with what LIPA described as the largest power outage on Long Island in 25 years. By Tuesday morning, almost 50 percent of affected customers’ power had been restored, and as of Wednesday afternoon, 358,000 of the original 523,000 had electricity.

That was good news for those who were up and running again, but those numbers don’t help if you were one of the 165,000 customers who, three days after the rain stopped, still couldn’t shower with hot water, refrigerate their food, turn on lights, charge their cell phones — or operate a pump to get the water out of their basements. People were still without power late into the week and through last weekend. As of 6 a.m. on Sept. 1, 99,000 customers were still out.