🚀 go-pugleaf

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203707604578092811009207612.
html?mod=WSJ_article_LatestHeadlines

As overnight temperatures fell to the 40s, power crews in more than a 
dozen states navigated a tangle of fallen trees, downed power lines and 
dangerous floodwaters in the painstaking, house-by-house work of 
reconnecting millions of customers left in the dark by Sandy.

Power was restored by late Thursday to about half of 10 million households 
and businesses that lost electricity during the storm, according to the 
Edison Electric Institute, a trade group that represents investor-owned 
utilities. But millions more remained cut off from power needed to operate 
furnaces, heaters, refrigerators and lights.

"It's freezing like an ice box," said Lydia Crespo, who was using a gas 
stove to heat her home in Staten Island, N.Y., still without power. "No 
hot water, no light. All you smell is the gas, the oil, the mold."

The death toll attributed to Sandy reached at least 90, authorities said 
Thursday. Transit bottlenecks began to ease in New York City with the 
reopening of some subways, but in New Jersey and elsewhere lines stretched 
long from gas stations lucky enough to have both electricity and gasoline. 
Amtrak said it would resume southbound train service from Pennsylvania 
Station on Thursday evening, and limited service to Boston on Friday. Late 
on Thursday NJ Transit announced that limited service into New York's Penn 
Station would begin Friday, but the system remained largely out of 
service.

U.S. Air Force cargo planes were flying utility crews and 636 tons of 
equipment, including electric company bucket trucks, to speed power 
restoration.

Long-standing mutual-aid pacts, activated days before Sandy hit, drew an 
emergency team of more than 64,000 workers from 82 utility companies 
across the U.S., including a crew from San Diego Gas & Electric that 
arrived Thursday.

"It's epic," said Brian Wolff, senior vice president of Edison Electric. 
"I think it's the biggest mobilization we've seen."

Their task is Herculean: 1.7 million customers were without electricity in 
New Jersey; 1.5 million in New York; 500,000 in Pennsylvania; 348,000 in 
Connecticut; 139,000 in West Virginia; 40,000 in Maryland; and 21,000 in 
Rhode Island.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said neighborhoods served by 
overhead lines may not be repaired until the end of next week. "We have 
volunteer crews from across the country," Mr. Bloomberg said. "But it's 
just an enormous job, and you have to go up in a bucket and fix each one 
as you get to it."

Utility crews were slowed by downed trees blocking roads and homes with 
standing water that made them too dangerous to reconnect to the grid.

"We've got to go block by block, house by house," said Ralph Izzo, 
chairman of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., a New Jersey utility.

Workers at the utility, which serves a wide swath of the state, used 
toothbrushes to scrub the mud from flooded equipment at switching 
stations, he said, trying to get them working for 780,000 customers 
without power. Workers used rags to dry the gear by hand.

Mr. Izzo said he worried not just about customers but employees. He 
coordinated the rescue of one crew stranded by floodwaters rushing a 
Newark switching station. He heard from a surgeon pleading for power at a 
hospital to perform a heart transplant and from mothers with infants in 
unheated homes.

Mr. Izzo made sure electricity was restored to the surgeon, but, he said, 
the mothers had to wait. "Your heart genuinely goes out to them and the 
discomfort they're feeling," he said. "But you have to be honest with them 
and say your best action is to put another blanket on."

In Livingston, N.J., the Leit family was among Mr. Izzo's customers 
without power as overnight temperatures fell. Jeremy Leit, who will be 5 
years old Sunday, had a cold before the storm hit. "But now it's gotten 
worse," said his father, Richard Leit. "It's turned into pneumonia, the 
doctor said today."

The family has been "bouncing around to neighbors' houses for a few hours, 
to charge up phones and give the kids a break and a play date," he said. 
Mr. Leit said he and his wife were debating whether to drive to 
Pennsylvania for a hotel. "Our car has heat," he said. "It's probably more 
comfortable than the house."

He has only been able to reach a recorded message at his utility. "Every 
time it disconnects you and says we're sorry, it's too busy," he said.

A spokeswoman said the Public Service Enterprise Group has taken more than 
one million calls in the last three days, and that "when issues escalate 
we do our best to resolve them." She added that the utility had restored 
electricity to a hospital not far from the Leit family's home.

Mr. Leit was among millions of utility customers asking why the 
restoration of power wasn't faster�and why others received electricity 
ahead of them.

The reason, according to utilities and regional grid operators, is that 
crews focus first on restoring power to high-voltage lines that move 
electricity long distances to power plants and larger substations.

Then workers restore connection for such essential services as hospitals, 
fire stations, police stations and traffic lights. Next, work begins on 
distribution lines that serve the largest neighborhoods. While that 
results in the most efficient use of limited work crews, it results in so-
called asymmetric restoration: A great number of people get service 
restored in the first few days; others wait far longer because their lines 
serve fewer and fewer customers.

As many as half a million homes can't receive power because they were too 
badly damaged or because floods posed an electrocution hazard, officials 
said.

As food in unplugged refrigerators began to go bad, FEMA representatives 
started handing out dry ice in parts of New York City. To stay warm, some 
residents used gas stoves. Two teenage women, ages 18 and 19, died from 
carbon monoxide poisoning from using a portable generator indoors in 
Newark, N.J., where half the city was without power. "We mourn their 
loss," Mayor Cory Booker said Thursday. "It was tragic and entirely 
preventable."

He warned residents of carbon-monoxide poisoning from using stoves or 
ovens to heat their homes. "This is dangerous," he said. "Do not do this."

Christina Laracuente, a 20-year-old-resident of the LaGuardia Houses, one 
of New York's public-housing developments on the Lower East Side, said she 
had heard from a neighbor of people posing as New York City Housing 
Authority officials to enter apartments.

"It's scary because this is the ghetto," she said. "This is the hood. It's 
not good on a daily basis. Imagine during a blackout."

-- 

Obama's black racist USAG appointee.
Eric Holder, racist black United States Attorney General drops voter 
intimidation charges against the Black Panthers,  "You are about to be 
ruled by the black man, cracker!" 

Eric Holder, prejudiced black United States Attorney General settles the 
hate crime debate, "Whites Not Protected by Hate Crime Laws."

Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to 
former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New 
York's million dollar tax evasion.   

Barack Obama and Eric Holder,  committed treason by knowingly and 
deliberately arming enemies of the United States of America through 
Operation Fast and Furious.  Complicit in the murder of Federal employees 
during the execution of their duties.



--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---