Community Corner

Update: Some Power Restored in Farmingdale

Thousands still without power Monday afternoon.

LIPA crews restored power to approximately 500 Farmingdale residents Monday morning, but thousands are still without power.

The LIPA Storm Center Outage map reports the following existing outages Monday at 2 p.m.:

  • 2,428 out of 4,957 South Farmingdale homes are without power.
  • 126 out of 3,011 Village of Farmingdale homes are without power.
  • 936 out of 4,765 East Farmingdale homes are without power.

The Long Island Power Authority says it expects 95 percent of customers to have power restored by the end of the week.

Find out what's happening in Farmingdalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Farmingdale residents are getting creative to weather the power outages.

"We are using a power inverter that converts the vehicle power for electricity," said Theresa Rodgers, who lives on Clifton Street in Farmingdale. "So the car is taking care of the refrigerator as of now.  Otherwise just have lanterns and flashlights for night time."

Find out what's happening in Farmingdalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Hurricane Irene hit Farmingdale with 3.89 inches of rain and 61 mph winds this weekend. On Monday morning, a total of 419,538 LIPA customers had no power - the Island's biggest power outage in 26 years.

The utility revised the total number of those who lost power as a result of Hurricane Irene upward to 523,000 customers and said about 24 percent -- or 125,000 -- have their power back.

"This is not something where the last day we're going to be looking to be putting on very, very large blocks of customers," Hervey said. "We will have a very successful day I'm sure and the numbers will dwindle over the next couple of days."

The company reported that it expects to finish initial damage asssesments on Monday and that 2,271 workers and contractors are on the restoration job.

"Unlike yesterday we have a full 16 hours of daylight to work and we expect to make good progress," said John Bruckner of National Grid. 

LIPA is hoping an increase in manpower might speed up restoration.

"We'd like to do better," Hervey said. "We have a request for more linemen and to the extent we can get more linemen on Long Island we're going to move that [power restoration] timetable up."

Rodgers said she heard power would be restored by tonight or tomorrow and that they are holding up for now.

"My children are having fun with this and are actually getting along,"  she said. "We do have two leaks in roof now that we have to take care of..but it could have been so much worse."


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