Tropical Storm Isaias ripped through an already bruised New York City on Tuesday, Aug. 4, causing approximately 300,000 homes to lose power, including about 20,000 in the Bronx according to Con Edison. The National Weather Service reported sustained winds of 30 to 40 miles per hour during its passage, with a wind gust of 78 miles per hour reported in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan.

 

In the Bronx, the storm uprooted trees and downed power lines along Bedford Park Boulevard, Jerome Park, and Morris Park, damaging several vehicles in the process. Several fallen trees were also seen in Williamsbridge Oval Park.

 

By Wednesday afternoon, Con Edison said they expected that power in 150,000 of the affected households across the City would be restored by Thursday morning, Aug. 6, and the remainder would be restored by the following Sunday, saying they were prioritizing areas of the City where there were large clusters of outages. In the Bronx, this included the North East, the South East, Riverdale and anywhere where there were a lot of trees.

 

The destruction surpassed that of Hurricane Irene, which caused 204,000 customer outages in August 2011. Con Ed added, in a press release, that the record for storm-related outages was 1.1 million, caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, and a Nor’easter that struck the next week.

 

Residents were cautioned to stay away from downed wires, and not to assume they were de-energized, as they may still be live. No injuries were reported in the borough according to the NYPD.

One tree came down on a home along Sackett Avenue in Morris Park, and some businesses along Cruger Avenue in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx also reported power loss. Con Edison reported scattered outages across the borough, with 21,655 customers without service on Tuesday night. By Wednesday afternoon, they confirmed that power in 5,300 households had been restored.

 

Multiple fallen trees were reported along Sedgwick Avenue in Jerome Park. A video taken by Steve Bobkner on Aug. 4 of the damage seen at the scene looked worse than the damage sustained in that area following Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz released a statement on Wednesday, and was extremely critical of Con Edison, saying, “I am absolutely furious at yet another atrocious response from Con Edison to power outages in the Bronx. It is unacceptable to leave Bronxites in the dark – both literally and figuratively – about when they should expect to be able to operate essential medical equipment, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, and more”.

 

He added, “I can appreciate that there may have been a lot of damage, but much of this destruction could have been prevented had Con Edison buried their aboveground power lines years ago. Instead, they chose to continue putting shareholder profits above the interests of people like us”.

 

He continued, “As rumors abound that power may not be restored for seven to ten days in some cases, Con Edison’s only response is that people with medical equipment needs should contact the NYPD or try to be admitted to a hospital. This is an absurd contingency plan that fails to acknowledge the reality of our current circumstances.

 

We are still in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and Con Edison wants their utility customers to go into a hospital because they weren’t prepared for a storm everyone saw coming? We have more shootings in New York than we have had in several decades, and Con Edison wants people to call the police because they haven’t come up with their own solution for people with medical needs? This is not a response; it is a deflection and Con Edison needs to take responsibility for their failures”.

 

He added, “I am glad that Governor Cuomo has asked the Public Service Commission to investigate Con Edison’s response to these outages along with other utility providers across New York State. It is evident that the energy status quo in New York is broken. Utility consumers need an independent advocate, like 43 other states and the District of Columbia already have, in addition to the Governor’s internal office and state utility regulators.

 

We need to look seriously at shifting to publicly owned power where the people of New York would have greater influence on investments in resilience infrastructure such as buried power lines and grid redundancy. What we have now is unacceptable and people could be injured or worse due to Con Edison’s horrendous response to this storm”.

 

Meanwhile, Friends of Mosholu Park were busy removing the remains of a fallen tree in a vegetable garden located beside the Keeper’s House at 3400 Reservoir Oval East on Wednesday morning, Aug. 5. Elizabeth Quaranta and her colleague David completed some stellar work in a matter of a few hours clearing the wooden debris.

 

“Well, we walked into pure devastation,” Quaranta said. “The garden was literally under the one tree that’s inside the Keeper’s House edible garden, and and so someone must have come in. I guess, maybe, people from the BID may have come in and started the work off because we see some clean cuts on the branches, but nevertheless, it was completely hidden”.

 

Quaranta continued, “All the planters with the fruits and vegetables were all hidden underneath the branches and ironically, we were already thinking of pruning the tree that came down way back because we have an expansion plan for next year on the edible garden but we never wanted it to be like this!”

 

She added, “I was just telling David that there’s no such thing as coincidences really. Things happen for a reason and, and I hate to say it, but it literally opened up the area that we needed.”

Quaranta said, in the meantime, they were going to just carry on working. “We’ll clean it up. We’re going to try to salvage, believe it or not, some trunks from some of the limbs, and see if we can put them as compost, do twig projects, branch projects but it looks really bad now. In a couple of days now that it’s been cut, and it’s not alive, that moisture will be coming out, so the piles that you see around us are going to get smaller, and then we can do further clean-up,” she said.

 

“Right now, the key is to get an entranceway cleared, to get the shed cleared because that’s where our tools are so we need access to water the tomatoes, the blueberries and the salads, to continue to water what we’re growing.”

 

 

Quaranta added that Mosholu Parkland volunteers had come out on Tuesday night, Aug. 4 to help with the clean-up efforts in the local area. “The clean-up was on the Bedford Park side,” she said. “So, 316 East Marshall Parkway South actually came out and did some volunteer work in dragging [tree] limbs out last night.” She said nobody was injured to her knowledge.

 

During a media briefing on Aug. 5, one reporter informed Con Edison that there appeared to be a lack of communication regarding the power outages, with many residents saying they couldn’t log them online due to the fact that they had no electricity, and nobody was answering the phone when they called.

 

One person was reported killed by Isaias along 84th Drive in Queens when a large tree fell on top of a vehicle, and a branch fell on one woman in Brooklyn.