NEW YORK — Con Edison was in Washington Heights on Thursday, handing out dry ice for residents stuck without power while crews worked through the heat and the rain to return electricity to thousands of its customers in the neighborhood.
What You Need To Know
- Nearly 2,000 Con Edison customers in Washington Heights had power outages
- Since the heat wave started Sunday, 50,000 New Yorkers across the city suffered outages
- Con Edison said the outage in Washington Heights was caused by the high heat, which triggered a feeder cable’s fail-safe system, shutting down the line
Power in the apartment building where Claudia Joa, her mother and brother live went out the prior night. The outage lasted for about 12 hours.
“The lights went off out of nowhere, and, you know, it’s hot and everything, so I woke up confused and I was just sweating and everything,” Joa said. “It was a nightmare because it’s too hot to not have the A/C on. It was just too hot.”
“We tried open the window, but it still was hot,” said Joa’s mother, Yajaira Grullon. “We have a little fan, too, but when it’s too hot you don't feel like, nothing. We dont have no power, so we don’t have no fan, no A/C, nothing.”
The family was one of nearly 2,000 Con Edison customers who lost power in Washington Heights.
Con Edison asked New Yorkers to limit their electricity use as much as possible.
Janette Prudhomme, who had power through the heat wave, limited her usage.
“We have four A/Cs at home, so what we did was we kept everybody in two rooms just to save some power,” Prudhomme said, describing efforts just to avoid a major blackout.
“I panicked because I remember the last blackout and it was not fun,” she said. “And my parents are much more elderly than they were before. And it’s like, it would be bad if we had a power outage for them.”
Con Edison said power to all Washington Heights residents came back at 8 p.m.
The cause of the outage, according to utility, was the high heat making a feeder cable’s fail-safe system kick in, effectively cutting power to the area.
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