Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Storms knock out power to thousands in Long Island, New Jersey, possibly until Friday


Kala Rama reporting from East Setauket
About 15,000 PSEG Long Island customers remain without electricity a day after a powerful thunderstorm swept through the area.

Company President David Daly said it will likely take until Thursday for service to be fully restored.

Crews from New York City, New Jersey and upstate utilities are assisting with repairs.

The Long Island Rail Road is running normally, and the NJ Turnpike is open, although there was a minor crash in the truck lanes Wednesday morning.

More than 70,000 customers lost power during Tuesday's storm that knocked down trees and power lines across a wide swath of the North Shore.

There are trees toppled over homes and trunks acting as barricades in the roadways. Thousands of trees are tangled on or resting with power lines.

The people in this area are complaining there are not enough utility crews working on getting the power back.

The storm hit around 5 Tuesday morning with winds of up to 80 miles per hour.

Since then, PSEG Long Island says it had 500 to 600 crews on the roads along with help from Con Ed crews.