Nearly 15,000 New York City residents are still without power Monday evening as Con Edison works to restore power following this weekend's extreme temperatures and Monday night's heavy rain and lighting.
Most of the customers without power are located in Brooklyn and Queens. Power is expected to be restored by 3 p.m. Tuesday for most Brooklyn and Queens, according to Con Edison.
LATEST OUTAGE NUMBERS (as of 10:31 p.m.)
Brooklyn: 6,589 customers without power
Queens: 7,962
Bronx: 28
Manhattan: 97
Staten Island: 255
CON EDISON ASKS PEOPLE TO CONSERVE ENERGY
In the meantime, the utility is urging people to conserve energy.
Trouble spots in Brooklyn include Flatbush, Prospect Park Lefferts Gardens, Prospect Heights, Canarsie, Flatlands, Old Mill Basin, and Bergen Beach while crews work to repair their equipment.
Parts of Queens also saw outages, the most of which were reported in Jamaica.
Con Edison has also reduced voltage in parts of the Bronx.
Residents in the Woodside and Sunnyside section of Queens are being asked to cut down on electricity usage.
Officials want people to refrain from using energy-intensive appliances such as washers, dryers, microwaves and, if not needed for health or medical reasons, air conditioners until the equipment problems are resolved.
FRUSTRATED NEW YORKERS
Con Ed's latest outage began around 6 p.m. Sunday evening, affecting at least 50,000 customers in Brooklyn and Queens. The utility said about half were restored by Monday morning.
Most of the customers affected by this latest outage were in southeast Brooklyn, but there was some spillover into Queens. Con Ed said it had to deliberately shut off the power in some Brooklyn neighborhoods so it could make repairs more quickly.
"It would've prevented a longer outage," Con Edison spokesman Philip O'Brien said in a phone interview. "When we saw that 3,000 customers were already out at about 6 p.m., it was decided to take out an additional 30,000 because of the damage that would've otherwise occurred to their systems."
However, residents in areas like Mill Basin said they weren't given a heads up, and getting through the hot night without air conditioning was unbearable.
"No warning, no anything. We could have prepared," one resident said. "I could have done something with my food, I could have left somewhere, went somewhere. It's disgusting."
De Blasio said he was "extremely disappointed" with the utility and questioned its ability to provide timely updates.
"I'm not getting any real answers and they have let New Yorkers down once again. It's very clear there needs to be a full investigation into what happened not only last Saturday but what happened last night. It's very clear we have to question whether Con Ed as its structured right now can do the job going forward or if we need to go to an entirely different approach," the mayor said.
NY1 asked Con Ed for comment about the mayor's criticism. The utility said it regretted the distress those without power were under.
Con Edison and New York City Emergency Management set up a command center near a senior home on Strickland Avenue that was evacuated for health concerns. Video from the scene showed staff wheeling residents outside.
Traffic lights were also out at several busy intersections, with the NYPD deploying 200 extra officers to keep everyone safe, and Con Ed distributed dry ice to customers still without power Monday.
This most recent blackout follows a week of scattered outages that began when a large swath of Manhattan's West Side lost power nine days ago.
Officials say protecting the city's most vulnerable residents is priority.
"We work with our community leaders, and our first obligation is to make sure our emergency facilities such as hospitals, schools, emergency buildings, and community centers, those are the first ones we try to restore as soon as possible," said Con Ed spokesman Sidney Alvarez.
People who spoke with NY1 said the situation left them frustrated.
"Power went off about 6:15, my husband almost got stuck in the elevator — he would have been stuck this whole time. Thank God there's a breeze now just walking back and forth with the baby, had to go sit in my car for her to take a nap," said one city resident.
"We are really frustrated because we live on the fourth floor and it's so hot there, it feels like 130 degrees," noted another resident in Mill Basin.