Power restored after outage affecting Long Beach, rest of barrier island

Power was largely restored to Long Beach and the barrier island Tuesday evening, after an almost 80-minute outage that extended longer for some areas, city officials and PSEG Long Island said.

The outage began shortly after 4:30 p.m. and PSEG Long Island said most customers were restored as of 5:47 p.m. City officials said they were seeing power restored to parts of the northern section of the city as of 5:45 p.m. and the Point Lookout Civic Association said power had been restored there as of 6:06 p.m.

PSEG's outage map still listed 2,179 customers without power in Long Beach as of 7 p.m. Tuesday but that number came down to 137 within 10 minutes as power was returning. Initially, more than 20,000 were without power on the barrier island, including more than 16,000 in Long Beach alone.

In a statement, city officials said: "PSEG reports an issue with power lines connecting the barrier island to the main grid."

The outage may have been caused by a generator fire in Island Park, just north of the Long Beach Bridge, Long Beach officials said. But PSEG Long Island said the cause was still under investigation.

Amanda Castronovo, an owner of The Merrow on West Beech Street, was in the middle of a promotional video shoot when the power went out. She said she was thankful her cocktail bar was closed on Tuesdays so she didn’t have any customers inside.

Without traffic lights, the road was chaotic with cars in a jam, and she heard a lot of sirens passing.

Soon after the blackout started, she got a text from PSEG with an estimate of when the power would be restored —  by 6:30 p.m. — so she decided to wait it out with the videographer. They got pizzas and listened to music on their phones.

“Being in Long Beach is like being in a movie,” said Castronovo, who has lived in the community since she was 9. “That was surreal. … Power outage nowhere else on Long Island but Long Beach.”

A Nassau police spokesman said officers had been on the scene in Lido Beach, Atlantic Beach and Point Lookout — all of which had been affected by the outages — monitoring intersections and helping direct traffic. The county police department does not monitor the City of Long Beach, which has its own police department.

Long Beach city officials said firefighters responded to help the elderly population and the city's assisted living center. Police directed traffic and responded to calls, they said.