Advisory - O&R Continues to Make Progress in Repairing Transmission Lines; Restores Power to 72,000 Customers

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O&R Continues to Make Progress in Repairing Transmission Lines; Restores Power to 72,000 Customers

PEARL RIVER, NY Nov.1, 2012 10 p.m. — O&R has restored power to 72,000 customers. Approximately 160,000 remain without service. The vast majority of those customers should have their electricity back on by the end of next week with the final restoration occurring through the following week.

Currently, more than 1,000 O&R employees and over 1,000 contractors from almost 20 states are working to restore power. The numbers of outages by county are:

Rockland: 63,000
Orange: 41,000
Bergen: 38,900
Passaic: 10,000
Sullivan: 6,000
Pike: 1,000
Sussex: 100

O&R has made substantial progress repairing its transmission lines and substations. Field crews have repaired all of O&R’s 17 de-energized substations, 22 of its 27 damaged transmission lines, and 40 of its 101 downed distribution circuits. This progress is significant. Substations must be energized and the circuits repaired before restoration can continue on the distribution, or local loads.

Here are the steps to restore local load:

Damage assessment on state, county and major local roads.
Reconstruction of the distribution system on state roads, followed by county roads. After that work is done, crews will be shifted to restoring circuits feeding critical infrastructure and services. These critical facilities include local governments whose operations provide essential services required by residents.
Restoration then moves onto critical infrastructure followed by the largest block of customers out of service, smaller blocks of customers and then individual customer service outages.
As restoration continues, site safety personnel are working to ensure public safety by securing downed wires on major roads.

O&R offers these safety tips:

Assume any downed wire is live and dangerous. Stay away from it and call O&R at 1-877-434-4100 to report it.
Portable generators pose a serious hazard if used improperly. They should be used and installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions. A wrong connection could feed electricity back through the lines and endanger our repair crews. Never plug a generator into a wall unit, use it indoors or set it up outdoors near open home windows or air-handling vents.
When temperatures dip and you’re without power, don’t use a natural gas powered oven or range to heat a room. Doing so could create either a fire hazard or a life-threatening exposure to carbon monoxide gas.