SNOW JOB: Donny Pascal, of Elmont, LI, digs out yesterday from Mother Nature’s latest insult: a half-foot of snow dropped during the nor’easter. The storm knocked out Pascal’s power just after it had been restored. (AP)
Some frustrated Long Island residents got their electricity back for a New York minute before the powerful nor’easter cruelly took it away again.
Maddie Eliantus, 29, of Elmont, praised her maker when the lights finally came back on after 10 days without juice.
But when she got back from work at around 4 p.m. yesterday, she found the power out again.
“It must have been only 10 hours we had power,” she said. “I’m upset because I only got it last night, and today, I’m going to be in the cold again.
“I just don’t feel like sleeping in the cold anymore. Ten days without heat! It’s crazy. I’m frustrated.”
A neighbor, Donny Pascal, said he suffered a similar fate. He lost power during Hurricane Sandy and had it restored by the Long Island Power Authority, only to lose it again in the nor’easter.
Some 122,000 Con Ed customers in the city and Westchester were without power early yesterday, with an estimated 55,000 of those customers losing power after the nor’easter dumped as much as 7 inches.
By early this morning, the number of customers without power in the city and Westchester had dropped to about 43,000, Con Ed said.
The storm also knocked out power in 123,000 homes on Long Island.
Sheila Labranche, 40, of Elmont, lost electricity during Sandy and was dark for four days before getting back power. But the lights were knocked out again by the new storm.
“It was so good to have heat,” Labranche said about the five days they had power.
Now she’s back to boiling water to keep warm.
“I’m freezing. Look at me . . . It’s just so scary because it’s so cold,” she said.
Con Ed crews worked through the storm, and only 65,500 were without power in those areas yesterday afternoon, a spokeswoman said.
Adaku Ubanai, 40, also of Elmont was thrilled when the lights came on Wednesday.
“Oh, my goodness — you should have seen the joy here. The kids were so happy. They were saying, ‘Thank God we have [power] so we can have heat,” she said.
But a day later, they were back in the dark.
There were still 39,681 without power in the Rockaways, LIPA said.
Residents blasted the utilities yesterday.
“We’re getting caught in bureaucracy, and it’s a real shame,” said Dan Mundy, president of the Broad Channel Civic Association in Queens.
Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese