By Liz McBreen
Valley Stream resident James Whalen was in the area when the wire came down. "The pole was leaning towards a home, and the line was hanging overhead, sparking in the street." According to Whalen, the police called LIPA repeatedly, and were told each time that someone would be at the site of the downed wire in twenty minutes.
The police responded to a 911 call shortly after the wire fell, and blocked off the wire to protect passers-by from the dangerous situation. An hour later, no one from LIPA was on the scene, and the Franklin Square Munson Fire Department was alerted.
According to Burt Cunningham of LIPA, the long delay was due to many heat-related outages going on across the area last week. "There were 40,000 outages across Long Island between Monday and Friday. We had extra crews working 16 hours a day on an overlapping schedule around the clock," said Cunningham
Fire Chief Louis Sabatino of the FSMFD arrived shortly before 1 a.m. and remained there until almost 4 a.m. "I was told by a supervisor at LIPA that there were two or three men covering Nassau and Queens that night, and they were all out on calls." Sabatino told the supervisor of the magnitude of the situation, and asked if anyone could be called in to deal with the incident, and the chief was told that nothing could be done. "If we have a house fire, and there are not enough men in to cover it at the house, more men are called in," said Sabatino.
According to the fire chief, 20-25 volunteers fire fighters responded to the downed wire and remained on the scene for almost three hours. "These guys do not get paid for this, and they all had to go to work in the morning."
Shortly before 4 a.m., the volunteers left, leaving the situation in the hands of the police until LIPA arrived.
