LIPA: Nearly all customers have power back

Five full days after more than a quarter-million Long Islanders lost electrical power during the storm that battered Nassau and Suffolk, the Long Island Power Authority finally has most of those customers back online, the utility company's Web site said.

As of 2 p.m. Thursday, 1,212 customers - 916 of them in Hempstead - were still without service, down from a high of more than 253,000 over the weekend, LIPA said on its Web site. LIPA officials remained hopeful all customers would be back on line sometime Thursday.