Power-starved lower Manhattan lit up with joy tonight as Con Ed restored electricity to thousands of customers who lost power to Hurricane Sandy.
Just after 7 p.m., 30,000 customers were lit up around Madison Square. Minutes before, another 8,770 Con Ed customers around City Hall were restored.
Some 27,500 Con Ed customers in Chelsea had their power back just before 6 p.m. An hour earlier, power was restored to 67,000 Con Ed customers in the East Village and Lower East Side.
“People of the EV & LES: Resist urge to French kiss electrical sockets in celebration. Hug a @conedison worker instead,” tweeted Kat Kinsman, whose twitter handle is @kittenwithawhip.
The restorations left 92,700 Con Ed customers in Manhattan were still without electricity. Con Ed’s Twitter stream hinted at further restorations: “Hang tight while networks come up, help out by turning things off in your apt,” the company said.
Elsewhere, Con Ed made halting progress: By this afternoon, it had pared back the number of customer outages to 85,000 in Queens, 38,000 in Staten Island, 37,000 in Brooklyn and 28,500 in the Bronx.
Westchester still had 123,600 homes and businesses without power.
Con Ed brought power back to parts of Manhattan a day earlier than it had promised. The company had said it expected to have all of Manhattan back by tomorrow, and the “vast majority” of its customers back by next weekend.
Some people served by downed overhead wires may be without power until the middle of the month, the company admits