NEW YORK — Thousands of people on Staten Island were hit with a blackout Friday — though the lights came on sooner hours earlier than expected, a relief for some businesses and homes.

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About 6,000 Con Ed customers lost power on the island. On a sweltering hot, humid day — when temperatures soared into the 90s and the heat indices were over 100 at one point — it was a bad time for an outage, especially for a florist who had a big wedding order the next day.

“The lifespan of flowers, especially when you’re talking about these temperatures, even though we kept the boxes closed and didn’t go in and out of them, they can heat up pretty quickly,” said Diana Moses, the owner of Blossom Time Flowers.
 

Diana Moses, the owner of Blossom Time Flowers, was left worried about her flowers after a power outage Aug. 13, 2021, when temperatures were well into the 90s. NY1/Dan Rivoli.

It was also very inconvenient for the Italian ice shop next door. John Urcinoli, the owner of Cool Ice on Victory Boulevard, had to close up early to protect more than one hundred buckets of Ralph’s Famous Italian Ices. He said customers on this hot day were banging on the windows, looking for a scoop.

“Next thing you know, the power goes out. So having an Italian ice store, as you can see, I started panicking a little bit,” Urcinoli said. “I tried to protect the product.”

About half of the 6,000 customers that lost power on the island were in the Castleton Corners and Westerleigh neighborhoods.

The utility asked customers in the following neighborhoods to conserve energy and not use powerful appliances while crews made repairs:

• West Brighton
• Livingston
• Port Richmond
• Castleton Corners
• Sunnyside
• Mariner’s Habor
• Arlington
• Bloomfield
• Chelsea
• Travis
• Great Kills
• Richmond Valley

Con Ed reduced voltage in those areas by 5% to protect equipment from further damage. The utility urged people to reduce usage of air conditioners for now.

Con Ed told residents to expect the lights to come back on at 3 a.m., but the work went quicker than expected.

As of 9:30 p.m., just 137 customers were waiting for power. By 11 p.m., Con Ed reported power was fully restored on the island, and only about 370 customers in the city overall were still without electricity.

To report an outage or check on restoration status, visit coned.com/reportoutage or call 1-800-75-ConEd.

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