April Showers With Lethal Power: LIPA PLANS

By Deborah S. Morris, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Apr. 15–Long Island Power Authority President Richard Kessel said lessons learned after Tropical Storm Ernesto have helped prepare the utility for today’s nor’easter.

After the Labor Day weekend storm with wind gusts topping 50 mph left nearly 128,000 LIPA customers without power last year, much of the damage was blamed on dead or dying trees that fell in high wind.

“A lot of the work has been done: tree trimming, preventative maintenance, replacing old and rotting [utility] poles,” Kessel said. “The problem you are going to see are water-logged branches and trees coming down and taking wires.”

Kessel said between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., the utility will bring in 200 extra repair personnel and an additional 25 call center operators. By the 4-to-midnight shift today, there will be 300 total staff members working. He said an additional 75 contractors will be on call for emergency tree-trimming and electrical issues.

He said he expects that power outages are likely to occur in tree-laden areas such as the north shore of Nassau County, Huntington, Asharoken and eastern Long Island where wind gusts are expected to reach 60 mph.

“We’re ready,” Kessel said yesterday. “Our concern is the wind and the chance for wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour. The good news is we don’t have leaves on the trees so that certainly will cut down on the outages caused by falling branches. But at the same time with the wind gusts, I don’t have any question there will be outages produced by this storm of 50,000 or more.”

He urged customers to be patient if they are without power. “But people have to realize that the safety of our workers is priority. With 40 to 50 mile-per-hour winds, it’s hard to put people in buckets.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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