O&R Update: 8,600 in Rockland Without Power

Orange and Rockland reports that 8,600 Rockland County residents are still without power as of 10 a.m. Tuesday morning.

The company has restored electricity to over 80,000 homes, nearly 75 percent of those who lost it during Hurricane Irene, with 29,000 in the service area without.

O&R is still calling for most of those without power to have it restored by midnight Friday, with the last of them back over the weekend. O&R's outage map  shows the current status of outages in the area. Scroll over the triangles symbolizing each outage to show the number of people without power and the estimated time for it to be restored. The current estimates show times as late as 12 a.m. Sept. 4 for power to be back.

"We've got 180 crews going until it's done," said Mike Donovan of O&R Media Relations. "We're looking for more help.

"We had 110,000 lose electrictiy this time. We had 150,000 without power during Floyd and it took us almost two weeks to get them back."

Donovan said he has heard the complaints from customers who called 1-877-434-4100 during the storm and could not get through. They would hear a general voice message, then the system would cut them off. 

"We were swamped," Donovan said. "We have customer service representatives and the messaging system, but the call volumes were extraordinary and we couldn't accommodate them."

Approximately 9,000 of the customers without service at the start of the day Tuesday were in Rockland County The breakdown of those without power within O&R's service area at 4 a.m. was as follows:

• Rockland County: 9,000
• Orange County: 12,000
• Bergen County: 4,000
• Passaic County: 3,000
• Sullivan County: 1,800
• Pike County: 1,000
• Sussex County: 70

Clarkstown, among the hardest hit by power outages from the storm, on Monday had more than 7,000 customers without power. This morning, that number is down to 2,548.

O&R is rebuilding portions of its electric system, with 180 crews made up of its own workers and contractors and mutual aid crews from outside the area working to restore service.

O&R also had to shut off gas to over 500 customers as a precaution due to flooding.

"I've done a little research on the storm and why the destruction was so widespread in Rockland," Donovan said. "We found out that the eyewall settled over Harriman State Park. We were getting rainfall accounts in New City of about 8.75 inches of rain. Up in Tuxedo, they got 11.78 inches of rain. This was some rain storm for sure.

"The context is that this was billed as Armaggeddon and it turned out to be the worst storm we've had."

According to Donovan, power lines were also still going down as late as 11 p.m. due to tail winds from the storm.

Rockland County officials advise those without power who have a "person with special medical needs that require electricity or relocation" to call their local police department and ask to be placed on a special needs list.