August 11, 2020
Daniel Eichorn , P.E. President & CEO, PSEG Long Island Uniondale, NY
Dear Mr. Eichorn
I am writing to you today to express my Village’s displeasure and frustration with PSEG’s response to Tropical Storm Isaias regarding power restoration and ongoing communications failures. Currently, over half of the Village of Flower Hill is without power and estimates for restoration continue to change and be pushed back. Many residents are exasperated as this is the same experience they had after Super Storm Sandy.
The number one issue is that we need crews in our community now. It has been forty-eight hours since the storm and residents have not seen PSEG restoration personnel in the community. These PSEG customers have been abandoned. The only PSEG personnel I have spoken with in person has been assigned to keep an eye on a two day old live wire. They repeatedly tell me someone is supposed to be dispatched to turn it off at the end of their shift and then that does not happen. This is unacceptable from a safety and communications perspective.
Flower Hill is currently being under reported for the number of outages because of the communications failure during the storm. For more than twenty-four hours residents could not report outages and became so frustrated they gave up. There are entire blocks of Flower Hill you have listed as having power that do not actually have power. This is misleading and I believe impacting your response to our
community unfairly.
The communication failure has not stopped there, our residents who were able to report outages, cannot get an accurate restoration time estimate through any PSEG platform. Multiple residents have shared with me that they are getting conflicting restoration times from the telephone, text, app, and online map resources. This is continuing to increase frustration and despair in the Village.
I understand that these are challenging times but as a public serv}ce provider these issues must be addressed immediately. Due to COVID-19 customers cannot even go to a neighbor or family members home with power for shelter or support. We knew this storm was coming and you assured us multiple
times that PSEG was prepared but this is clearly not the case. Please provide assistance and address these communications failures immediately.
Brian Herrington Mayor
Village of Flower Hill
CC:
NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo NYS Senator Anna Kaplan
NYS Assemblyman Anthony D’Urso NYS Public Service Commission
