NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Mayor Bill de Blasio and Con Edison officials are urging New Yorkers to conserve energy.
Con Ed is dealing with some pockets of outages, including in Brooklyn.
About 1,700 customers were without power in Greenpoint on Wednesday afternoon. It was the most widespread outage Con Edison was dealing with out of its 3.5 million customers.
Longtime Greenpoint resident Diane Sullivan sat on her front stoop, trying to find some relief from inside her stifling home.
“It’s about 125,” she said.
“Degrees?” CBS2’s Andrea Grymes asked.
“Yeah, that’s what it feels like,” Sullivan said.
She’s just one of more than 1,500 Con Edison customers who lost power in the neighborhood around 2:30 a.m.
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“It woke me up because I was really hot … I went to the window and all the street lights were out,” resident Lydia Richardson said.
Neighbor Angel Davila heard the power lines go up in flames, igniting a mattress at the curb.
“It just blew. You heard like a, pshooo! And then there was, like, fire in that bed. You could hear it, like, cooking it and the fire department showed up,” he said.
One resident was so desperate, she bought a generator. Others picked up free dry ice from Con Edison on scene.
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The power company is dealing with day four of this oppressive heat wave.
Crews have been working around the clock to make sure the grid stays operational and working to restore any outages as quickly as possible.
They expect customers to far exceed last year’s peak power usage.
“It’s a strain. The demand, the demand for more power creates stress on the system. It’s something that minutes matter,” Con Edison spokesperson Jamie McShane said.
That’s why late Wednesday afternoon, the mayor issued an urgent plea.
“We have a real challenge on our hands so here’s the message to all New Yorkers — immediately, immediately reduce the use of electricity in your home or in your business. This is very serious stuff. We need to ensure that our electric supply is protected,” de Blasio said.
Con Edison also reduced voltage by 8% in parts of Queens to protect equipment.
Meanwhile, there’s no word when power in Greenpoint will be back on.
from CBS New York https://ift.tt/2Izr88c
