LIPA brings power back, but not fast enough for some

A full day of restoration work by the Long Island Power Authority brought tens of thousands of customers back online Monday, but it wasn't enough to quell rising frustration as LIPA says repairs could linger into next week.

LIPA chief Michael Hervey said Monday that completely restoring power to the vast majority of the LIPA customers who lost electricity during Tropical Storm Irene will take a full five days, with up to 10 percent of the work lingering into the weekend or even through next week.

At 10 p.m. Monday, 325,000 customers were without power in Nassau and Suffolk counties. LIPA said power had been restored to 198,000 customers. In total, the storm knocked out power to 523,000 of LIPA's 1.12 million customers, Hervey said.

However, state Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko, a Democrat, and other officials criticized LIPA at a news conference in Blue Point Monday for what they called a lackluster response to the storm.

"LIPA gets an F," LaValle said, adding he has asked Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to pressure LIPA to work with more urgency to restore power.

Lesko added that LIPA needs to make a priority of restoring power to Mather Hospital, where some departments still lack electricity.

Late Monday night, Hervey said LIPA had restored power to 10 of the 11 hospitals that lost power due to the storm, and 10 of 22 nursing homes. Only North Shore Syosset hospital remained without power, Hervey said.

LIPA said its priority is to restore power to hospitals, nursing homes, fire stations and evacuation shelters. Government offices move to the head of the line when it comes to repairs, said LIPA spokesman Mark Gross.

Next, LIPA will focus efforts on transmission lines, high-voltage lines and "any other jobs that will restore power to the highest number of customers at one time," Gross said. That's why individual or small groups of outages in neighborhoods could linger the longest, LIPA said.

Responding to complaints that customers have not seen LIPA repair trucks in their neighborhoods, officials Monday maintained that many staffers were indeed out in the field, primarily assessing the damage using their personal vehicles, not LIPA vehicles. They said some repair trucks out won't be LIPA branded, because they are from outside the state.

As hundreds of thousands of increasingly impatient customers wait for service, Hervey, an interim chief who is a candidate to become the full-time head of LIPA, said he understands the urgency of restoring power.

"This will be a big day for restoration," Hervey said Monday. "We have all crews out. We'll see a lot of progress today."

The power authority said it has deployed nearly 4,000 workers to repair damage at hundreds of separate "damage locations." Officials said Irene inflicted the worst damage to the system in more than a quarter century.

Hervey said survey crews during the past day have assessed about half the damage to the system's main line and found there are 750 "damage locations" that must be addressed by emergency workers. Meanwhile, restoration work has begun.

Damage ranges in severity from trees leaning on wires to locations in which multiple poles are down and need repairs. Replacement is a time-consuming job, Hervey said.

Given that most of the damage to the system is downed trees, LIPA has requested another 100 tree trimmers from outside Long Island to add to a force that numbers 650. LIPA also retained another 110 workers for high-voltage repairs on the system, the latest from Wisconsin and North Carolina, Hervey said.

LIPA stats:

Total customers who lost power: 525,000

Customers without power Monday night: 325,000

Total LIPA customers: 1.12 million

With Patrick Whittle