Thousands across New York remained without power overnight amid heat and humidity.
Con Edison restored power to about 13,000 people in southeast Brooklyn, a statement released at 1am yesterday said, but 40,000 people in the city were still without electricity. About 20,000 of those were customers in Brooklyn who were cut off on Sunday so that the utility could make repairs and prevent a bigger outage, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had said.
The scattered outages primarily affected Brooklyn and Queens.
The New York City Emergency Management Department was adding personnel on the ground across that part of Brooklyn, including at nursing homes and adult care facilities, to respond to emergencies and keep people safe, De Blasio said.
The Democratic mayor had tweeted that Con Edison would start bringing those “customers back 500 at a time around midnight.”
One of two facilities for seniors affected by the outage had its power back and generators were being sent to the other, De Blasio tweeted after midnight.
Meanwhile, air-conditioned buses were outside the facilities.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he deployed 200 state troopers, 100 generators and 50 light towers to Brooklyn, as well as personnel and command vehicles from the state Office of Emergency Management.
He urged New Yorkers to check on neighbors, especially the elderly.
“We have been through this situation with Con Ed time and again, and they should have been better prepared — period,” Cuomo said in a statement. “This was not a natural disaster; there is no excuse for what has happened in Brooklyn.”
Cuomo also said he directed the state Department of Public Service to widen its investigation into last week’s blackout in Manhattan to include Sunday’s outages in Brooklyn.
Equipment failure, not heat, caused the roughly five-hour blackout on July 13 that affected a 40-block stretch of Manhattan, including Times Square and the Rockefeller Center.
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