Pol to probe nursing home power outages

A Suffolk County legislator said he will lead an investigation into why it took crews working for the Long Island Power Authority four days to restore power to two nursing homes on LIPA's critical-care priority list.

At a hearing Monday of the Suffolk County Legislature's LIPA Oversight Committee in North Babylon, Legis. Steve Stern (D-Dix Hills) called it "unacceptable" that the nursing homes, Sunrise Manor in Bay Shore and St. Johnland in Kings Park, went four days without grid power, ultimately forcing some Sunrise Manor patients to evacuate. Both facilities had backup generators.

"For our most vulnerable citizens, this is not just an inconvenience. It can be a matter of life and death," Stern told about 30 people. He chairs a Suffolk committee on seniors that will probe the nursing home response, including an Oct. 3 hearing. "Ultimately, we want to get very specific answers from LIPA," Stern said. "Right now they are not giving specific answers on anything."

Eleven hospitals and 22 nursing homes lost power during the storm.

LIPA spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said the authority "followed established restoration priorities" in getting power back to hospitals and nursing homes, all of which were "a priority." She said LIPA warned the facilities in advance to prepare for the storm and was "in regular communication with all of the critical facilities so that they could make the best decisions regarding their patients" during the restoration.

But officials at both nursing homes disagreed. "They really didn't give me any specific advice or information," said Mary Jean Webber, chief executive of St. Johnland, which lost power the Saturday night before the storm hit. It operated on a backup generator, but the 250 residents went until Wednesday without air-conditioning, and Webber said the system suffered numerous momentary glitches.

Constance Fleming, administrator at Sunrise Manor, said LIPA representatives initially told her power was out because of a flooded Bay Shore substation, even though she could see outside the facility that a tree had crashed into power lines. Only after Stern interceded on Thursday was power restored -- a 15-minute fix to reconnect the wires she reported down Sunday. Around 20 of the 84 residents had no power, and eight had to be evacuated, Fleming said.

"There was no contacting back," Fleming said. "They said they would let . . . [us] know the status. That never happened."

Baird-Streeter said LIPA would review the response. "There will always be lessons learned and we look forward to working cooperatively with government officials and others on improvements as to how we as an Island respond to devastating weather events."Also at the meeting, Oversight committee member Peter Schlussler, a former KeySpan manager, reported he'd found $30 million in miscalculations and other "anomalies" in a consulting group's analysis of LIPA's future restructuring options, which include being bought out, turning into a purely municipal operation or remaining with an enhanced existing public-private model. The committee is requesting that LIPA delay its decision about future restructuring, scheduled to be finalized at an Oct. 6 trustees' meeting, until questions about the calculations and others can be clarified.

"There appears to be a fair amount of errors in it," Schlussler said of the analysis from the consultant, The Brattle Group.

LIPA's Baird-Streeter, responded, "It is not surprising that there are those who will try to find flaws in the study; the numbers and analysis provided by The Brattle Group has been fully vetted and analyzed internally and externally."

Joe Schroeder, another oversight committee member who works for the Suffolk County Legislature on energy matters, said the report "doesn't provide enough information on which to base an opinion. If we can't do this, I can't see how the board [of LIPA trustees] can," he said.

He cautioned, "We are going to live with this a long time."

Committee co-chairmen Matthew Cordaro and Shelly Sackstein offered differing views on which entity, LIPA or National Grid, was to blame for problems such as delays in restoring power to nursing homes.

"The buck has to stop at LIPA," Cordaro said in answer to Sackstein's charge that National Grid, the British-based company, was responsible.

"They've got 100-odd people," Sackstein noted of LIPA, which oversees various contractors.

Charles Hirsch, a retired electrical engineer who was among members of the public at Monday's meeting, said he has urged LIPA trustees for years to make National Grid power plants more efficient, to no avail.

"How can LIPA tell people to be more efficient in how they use electricity when they are not efficient in how they produce it?" he said.

Alice Cone, president of the Belmont Lake Civic Association, said she felt LIPA and National Grid's response during the storm left "a lot to be desired." Most troubling, she said, was a live wire left burning on a street in her neighborhood for 30 hours. She praised Suffolk County police for standing guard full-time until it was repaired.

"The pole was literally on fire," she said.

LIPA has already committed to a full review of its storm response. A State Senate committee on investigations will also hold hearings on it this month, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has called for an audit of the effort.