Page 39 - Con Ed News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Fix that situation. back here in lower manhattan, battery park city, of course, this is part of the area, the evacuation area that was on the list. many people here either if they did stay in this area, they probably had to leave at some point because the power was turned off in this area. and that's a whole, you know, other issue that they'll have to face. you know, con edison, the utility, systemically shutting down certain parts of the city. before this storm, all the way, you know, moves through here. so it would be easier for them in the end to restore that power. so we've got a lot of is...

What do we know about that and what impact does that have on the situation? >> we're trying to learn more about that. i don't believe that had a significant impact on the power outage. they began powering down various parts of manhattan and expanded it as they realized the surge was going to be bigger. for example, the hudson river has come over 23rd street and it has made its way to 10th avenue. i don't think any of us have ever seen that before. that gave con-ed concern that the system in the chelsea area could have getten flooded and once the cold water hits the hot steam, you have to start...

Parts of very lower manhattan that still have power. con-ed expects many outages to last at least throughout the morning and possibly longer. they have to pump out some stations and fix their equipment. the one thing that we had not counted on, new york university's hospital backup power, in spite of them being ensuring us it's been tested, stopped working and we're working with them to help move people out. we are seeing a large number of fires caused by downed wires on electrical problems relating to outages. if you see a wire on the ground, please, don't touch it. just stay away. two seriou...

Rain, with fire, with power lines down. it's a very tough situation in greenwich. on top of that, further north in easton, connecticut, you had a firefighter responding to an emergency and a tree literally came down on his vehicle and apparently he suffered some sort of head injury and also suffered a cardiac arrest and he died in the line of duty trying to respond to a fire there. you have towns like westport, connecticut, where 80% of the residents are without power. in new york city, 670,000 customers without power. it is the biggest outage in new york city history. according to con ed. and...

Unfortunately, just as forecast, if anything, they got a little less rain out here in western pennsylvania than we thought they would. but in general, unfortunately this was right on target and the hurricane center really did a terrific job as well. so, you know, the folks that didn't prepare, didn't prepare because they didn't pay attention basically. andrea? >> and what we saw that flooding, now we've got, of course, and we're going to get to our reporters on location, we have the flooding in lower manhattan which forced con ed at some point last night to deliberately turn off the power so y...