The villages of Mineola and Williston Park have been restored to power, but officials in both municipalities raised serious questions about LIPA’s responsiveness during the outages.
Village of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss said Tuesday he was happy to report that power had been restored in the village, but joined a large chorus of public officials critical of the lack of information provided by the Long Island Power Authority during daily briefings the past two weeks.
“The specifics weren’t there,” Strauss said of the twice daily LIPA telephone briefings he participated in. “I had nothing to give anybody after these phone conferences.”
Strauss said village residents felt they had been forgotten as they waited for power to be restored.
“I think that we have an archaic system here in LIPA,” Strauss said. “I don’t think they’ve upgraded. I still think they’re going by paper charts.”
He cited one example of a woman who watched a LIPA crew replace a utility pole outside her house and discovered, after they left, that she had partial power. An electrician she summoned told her LIPA failed to hook up one feed line to the house.
“If you’re going to do something, do it right,” Strauss said.
Strauss praised Thomas Rini, superintendent of the village Department of Public Works and the village DPW crews and the out-of-state contractors who helped restore the power.
At last Wednesday night’s village board meeting, Strauss said the DPW guys did a “terrific” job.
The Nor’easter was a setback for Mineola, according to Strauss, who said the village still faced the task of removing debris from the streets in the wake of the snowstorm.
Parts of Williston Park were still awaiting restoration of power when the Nor’easter struck and knocked out power in much of village again.
“We lost a lot of the village again. The Nor’easter set us back,” said Village of Williston Park Paul Ehrbar.
Ehrbar said LIPA brought 15 trucks into the village the day the snowstorm struck, but withdrew them because the bucket trucks couldn’t operate in high winds. The trucks returned the next day and restored 99 percent of the power to the village, he said.
“It wasn’t until the Nor’easter came into the village that they came in and got things done,” Ehrbar said.
Ehrbar said he had been communicating regularly with LIPA, but was unsure whether that ultimately had an effect or not.
“Things happened. I dont’ know if it was because of better communications. I was in communications with them. Whether it was effective, I don’t really know,” he said.
He said although LIPA was responsive, they didn’t get things done initially. He said he welcomed the opportunity to have input during the investigation of the state utilities handling of recent storms announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday.
Strauss said he also welcomed the investigation if it produces fresh information about LIPA’s operations.
“I just hope when they do these investigations with the state, they come up with something new,” he said
At last Wednesday night’s meeting, Rini told the Mineola board that members of the Mineola DPW did all they were physically capable of doing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but said LIPA had left him in the dark about what it was doing in the village.
“We stayed out as long as we could and did as much as we could,” Rini said.
He said DPW crews were out all day when the storm struck the area on Oct. 29, and removed 20 downed trees that day. From that first day until Wednesday night when snow was falling from the nor’easter in progress ouside, Rini said his crews had worked 12-hour days.
Contractor crews were also brought in to assist with the cleanup, including a 60-ton crane with 120-foot pneumatic arm and a trailer with a front-loading excavator from Atlantic Crane in Suffolk County to lift and remove trees that blocked streets throughout the village. He said 60 large tree stumps still remain to be removed around the village, but most of the debris from the storm had been picked up.
“We had completed most of that by Sunday,” Rini said.
When village Trustee Lawrence Werther asked if Rini had received any indication from LIPA about taking care of broken utility poles that needed replacement, Rini said he had no word on that.
“There’s a lot of information that’s lacking,” Rini said.
He said he had seen pole crews working on Horton Highway and elsewhere in the village but added, “I’ve never been given any great information.”
At last Wednesday’s meeting, Village clerk Joseph Scalero said LIPA has been “very good” at taking information in, but hardly as adept at putting information out.
“It’s not comforting to tell people 10 days in that there are 50 [LIPA] guys working, but we don’t know where,” Scalero said.
He said approximately 20 percent or 25 percent of Mineola residents were still without power as of Wednesday and anticipated more households would be losing power due to the storm raging outside.
“We start round two,” Scalero said.
Scalero said member of the Mineola Fire Department started distributing a flyer by hand with latest information about what LIPA crews were doing in the village on Wednesday.
Rini praised the fire department for the assistance it provided his crews.
“The fire department kept us going. They fed us. They did everything they could to make things easier. Anything we needed, they were there for us,” Rini said.
He said the village administration is opening the Village Hall community center as “a place where people can come to get out of the cold.”
Resident Dennis Walsh was among residents who criticized LIPA for its apparent failure to deploy its own crews to deal with he power outages caused by the hurricane.
“I’m wondering where are the LIPA crews?” he said. “I believe that they wait for an emergency and contract guys from out of state. I see [LIPA crews] as non-existent.”
The village board unanimously passed a resolution at the meeting to waive village Building Department permit fees for any storm-related repairs to houses.
In other developments:
• Rini said he would submit information to the board on contractors’ bids for the Bruce Terrace flood mitigation project at the next board meeting on Nov. 14.
• Daniel Whalen, suprintendent of the village Building Department, said he expected final construction plans to be submitted shortly by Polimeni International for its Winston and Churchill apartment complexes.
