LIPA Responds Quickly to Restore Outages in the Wake of Severe Weather Storm

Old Bethpage, NY–July 18, 2007—As of 5:30PM the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has restored power to approximately 55,410 customers of the 62,960 customers out island-wide due to today’s severe weather system.

LIPA CEO & President, Richard M. Kessel, said that approximately 560 LIPA and KeySpan personnel, as well as, Asplundt contractors provided by Con Ed will work until midnight and approximately 110 personnel will work overnight to restore power to the remaining electric customers.  Currently, LIPA has restored approximately 55,410 customers with approximately 7,550 still being affected.  LIPA crews are currently working on 7,063 of the 7,550 customer outages and hope to restore most or all of the current outages later tonight and into the morning. 

“We all owe a thank-you to the men and women of our restoration crews and our call center operators, who work so hard in very difficult and often dangerous conditions to keep the island’s lights on. Today restoration crews did a remarkable job in a very short time,” said Mr. Kessel.

LIPA, a non-profit municipal electric utility, owns the retail electric Transmission and Distribution System on Long Island and provides electric service to more than 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.  LIPA is the 3rd largest municipal electric utility in the nation in terms of customers served and the 6th largest in terms of electricity delivered.  In 2006, LIPA outperformed all other overhead electric utilities in New York State in all three major reliability categories.  LIPA does not provide natural gas service or own any on-island generating assets. More information about LIPA can be found online at: http://www.lipower.org.

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LIPA Contact Information:
Media Relations: (516) 222-7700
Media Pager: (516) 525-LIPA
media.relations@lipower.org   

LIPA News Center
www.lipower.org/newscenter  

LIPA Storm Center
www.lipower.org/stormcenter