Storm Damage Cleanup In NY

MYFOXNY/AP - The cleanup continues across New York as flooded streets remain and outages continue from a wild weekend storm.

More than 140,000 residential and business electrical customers were still without power because innumerable trees, their grip on the earth loosened during a wet winter, went over in the wind and took power lines with them.

Consolidated Edison reports more than 8,000 customers in New York City remain without power on Tuesday. In Westchester, more than 50,000 are still in the dark.

Gov. David Paterson said one area in Westchester experienced 50 mph winds for six hours during Saturday's storm.

Hundreds of cold, dark schools were closed. Utilities handed out dry ice to save foods from rotting in warm refrigerators.

The mayor of New Rochelle told residents it would take "several days at least" to get power restored everywhere.

At least two deaths from falling trees were reported in the area — a 58-year-old man in Hartsdale and a 73-year-old woman in Bay Shore.

Con Ed officials said at the height of outages, the numbers were the worst  since Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

Paterson said Westchester would probably qualify for federal disaster aid.

Smaller utilities reported a few thousand outages in Putnam and Rockland counties.

On Long Island, more than 43,000 were out power on Tuesday, nearly half of them in the Town of Hempstead, the Long Island Power Authority said.

The number of individuals affected was likely much greater. A customer can represent anything from a single-family home to an entire apartment building, roughly translated to four individuals per customer.

In New York City, the 911 emergency phone system took in its second-highest number of calls — 65,000 in one 24-hour stretch. The record is 96,000, on the first day of a blackout in 2003. The terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, generated fewer because it was of the smaller "geographic reach," police said.

Nassau County's 911 system became overloaded, with some of the 10,000 incoming calls transferred as far away as Albany.

Thousands of trees fell in New York City alone, mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

"When the trees come down, we all know what happens to electricity and to the telephone lines," he said.

In the Highlands section of White Plains, The O'Sullivan Brothers landscaping firm was dealing with side-by-side 50-foot oaks that fell into side-by side homes on Smith Street.

One house, which was vacant when the tree fell Saturday night, had a deep cleft in the roof and undoubtedly significant water damaged inside. The other had a smaller scar in the roof and had its whitewashed stone chimney knocked away by the tree.

That house was owned by a White Plains firefighter, Louie Grassi, who was out working when the call came in about his own house getting slammed.

"It's kind of surreal," he told News 12 Westchester. "You can't do anything about it, you can't get stressed about it. You deal with it."

No injuries were reported from the double hit.

Shawn Kovach and her two children watched the work in a soft rain from the front yard across the street as the treecutters managed to take down 20-foot boughs without further damaging the homes.

Kovach said she was looking at the damage from the first tree when she heard the snapping of tree roots as the second oak went down.

"It was very traumatic to see that happen," she said. "Thank goodness no one was home. That's the little girl's bedroom, where it hit."

The White Plains Fire Department was asked to pump out 50 flooded basements, said Deputy Chief Edward Ciocca.

In Larchmont, a tree that went into a home on Vanderburgh Street took four utility poles with it. The street was littered with twigs and branches, wires and transformers and roof shingles blown off by the wind.

Regina Janicki, a cosmetologist who works at home in North White Plains, had been without power since Saturday, and was especially frustrated because she also lost power for 48 hours in a snowstorm last month.

"I have to keep going out to my car to recharge my phone and my DVD player," she said. "I spent $150 on candles. My husband went to work in an unironed shirt."