Day Four: Without Power in White Plains

• Correction: Santa Varbaro is 50-years-old, not 55

Not having power is getting old for some White Plains residents, who are spending their fourth day without power after Tropical Storm Irene knocked service on Sunday.

“I’m maintaining, but upset that I lost some food in the fridge, and had to lug some food to my cousin’s second freezer,” said Santa Varbaro, who lives at the Pine Hollow Gardens complex at 79 N. Broadway.

Varbaro is among the 317 households that still do not have power in White Plains as of Wednesday afternoon. Irene cut off power to 2,800 houses at the height of Sunday’s storm, according to Mayor Tom Roach.

White Plains Hospital’s Dickstein Cancer Treatment Center was among those to lost power early on. Thankfully the City and hospital’s emergency teams were able to restore power as soon as possible.

Roach reported that Con Edison was able to drop the number of outages down to 390 by Monday afternoon. Con Edison says power will be fully restored in the city by Thursday.

Since losing power Sunday, Varbaro has been taking showers at her aunt’s White Plains home, playing cards by candlelight, and using her cell phone as an alarm clock. At night she listens to the load rumble of a generator that illuminates some lights in the complex.

However, the 50-year-old says not having TV is one of the worst parts of losing power.

“I’m missing my Yankee games, and my soap operas that I had programmed to my DVR which I won’t be able to watch because it’s not working,” said Varbaro.

Con Edison—who has contracted crews from all over the country, including Texas and Kansas to assist with restoration efforts—are distributing dry ice to their customers and have deployed customer outreach vans. Click here for the distribution and van locations. 

While Con Edison does reimburse those who lose food during power outages, they do not reimburse customers if the outage is caused by a storm.

“I don’t see why we have to wait this long for service,” said Varbaro. “The traffic light on N. Broadway and Park Avenue is also out. It’s also inconveniencing my cousin and aunt, that have to be home when I need to get food or take a shower.”

Con Edison says they are working around the clock and have already restored power to 90 percent of their Westchester and New York City customers. Originally about 170,000 were without power in these areas.

The last time there was this many outages was during the March 2010 nor’easter, which left 173,000 without service. New York City got all their power back last night, and Westchester will have their service by Thursday night.

“Con Edison restores lines that will provide power to the most customers as quickly as possible, and then moves on to restore small groups and individual customers who are still without power,” a Aug. 31 Con Edison press release said.

Right now there are 17,000 in Westchester without power. 

Check out Locals are requesting and offering services, as well as offering good advice on how they are surviving storm damage. Tell us in the comments if you are in need of a service, can offer a service or just have some clever tips on how you are getting by.

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