North Shore residents, officials decry PSEG storm response

Thousands of homes and businesses across the North Shore lost power as Tropical Storm Isaias’s strong winds downed trees Aug. 4. The outages were inevitable, a number of residents said, but some expressed frustration with how PSEG Long Island responded, citing its lack of communication with residents and government officials.

Utility officials held a news conference Aug. 8 to address the outages. “We’ll continue to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the last customer is back,” said Daniel Eichhorn, PSEG Long Island’s president and chief operating officer. “We continue to meet with our mutual assistant groups, [and] we have opened a request for additional line workers to come into our territory. We’ve received about an additional 150 line workers, and we have about the same amount coming in tomorrow, and we have about 700 off-island, out-of-state tree trimmers that are coming in to assist with the restoration efforts.” 

Sea Cliff Mayor Edward Lieberman said he was on the phone daily with PSEG officials and others on the North Shore. The village, he said, was given the number for a municipal hotline at PSEG that could supply updates about power restoration. It was not always accurate, however, he said. At press time Tuesday, there were still homes in the village without power, even though PSEG said all power would be restored by Saturday.

“It’s been a delayed response, as we all have seen,” Lieberman said. “The lines of communication were unfortunately giving out multiple statements that were not consistent.”

Lieberman said that PSEG’s online power outage maps were largely inaccurate, which he said he informed company officials about, but nothing changed.

Village Administrator Bruce Kennedy said the village Department of Public Works worked nonstop after the storm, clearing fallen trees and cleaning village roads. PSEG did not, though, communicate with the DPW, he said.

Kennedy said the DPW and the Long Island Power Authority, PSEG Long Island’s predecessor, worked together during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, identifying and assessing problems. This time, though, he said PSEG ignored the village’s assessments, conducting its own without coordinating with the village. He said the village knew exactly where LIPA officials were during Sandy and Irene, and he said cleanup would have been more efficient if PSEG had worked with the village.

“We certainly could’ve coordinated if they had just communicated with us and gotten things done quicker and more efficiently,” Kennedy said.

Arthur Adelman, of Sea Cliff, said a transformer exploded down the block from his DuBois Avenue home on the day of the storm, spreading shrapnel across a 30-foot radius. He said the incident was reported to PSEG several times, but no one came to assess the problem for several days. He said the issue should have been taken care of immediately.

Adelman said that a single crew replaced the transformer in 90 minutes on Tuesday, a week after the storm.

“PSEG dropped the ball,” he said. “Nobody was here.”

Chris Roberto lives on Littleworth Lane, one of the hardest-hit areas in Sea Cliff. He said he had power restored by the evening of Aug. 6, although he had been told that it would be on by 10 p.m. the day before.

Roberto said a crew from Texas that was contracted by PSEG sat with several trucks in the North Shore High School parking lot for hours before being assigned to a restoration job. There was no lack of personnel, he said, so he was disappointed to see many workers waiting to be assigned work.

Marilyn Genoa said her cul-de-sac on Jaegger Drive in Old Brookville was still without power at press time Wednesday. She said she saw several PSEG officials come out nearly every day, which she said confused her, as she believed one person was needed for the area. After speaking with several assessors, she said she was repeatedly told there was no record of the area’s damage in the utility’s system.

Genoa said many homes in the area were built in the 1950s, and many residents are in their 80s. Her neighbors, she said, had no air conditioning in the summer heat, but worried about leaving their homes because of their potential vulnerability to the coronavirus. 

PSEG was still sending assessors to her street on Tuesday night, Genoa said, continuing what seemed like duplicative work with no results. “I’m extraordinarily frustrated,” she said. “I can’t believe the degree of incompetence that has been going on.”

Lieberman said PSEG must answer for its storm performance.

State Sen. Jim Gaughran, a Democrat from Northport, released a statement condemning PSEG’s response to the storm, calling for the termination of Eichhorn and Long Island Power Authority President Thomas Falcone.

“The events of the past week have made clear: PSEG-LI has failed Long Islanders,” Gaughran said. “Half a million Long Islanders were left in the dark without communication from PSEG, including seniors and medically vulnerable persons. Many still remain without power and without answers. LIPA, the oversight authority to PSEG-LI, has been asleep at the wheel and failed in its oversight of PSEG-LI, leaving Long Islanders to suffer for their inaction.”

Jennifer Corr contributed to this story