BROKEN HOME: A bundled-up woman searches through the remains of her mother’s wrecked house yesterday in hard-hit Breezy Point, Queens. (Getty Images)
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More than 130,000 city electricity customers are still without power — and it’s anyone’s guess when their nightmare may be over.
The current timetable for power restoration is sometime by the end of the week for at least the hundreds of thousands of Con Ed customers.
But given the expected upcoming bad weather, ongoing fuel shortages and infrastructure damage to many flooded buildings, officials said that may be wishful thinking.
Wind gusts expected to reach 50 mph by Wednesday could wreak havoc in areas such as Queens, Staten Island, Westchester and Long Island that are dependent on overhead lines.
“We are trying to finish up by [week’s end, but] especially with the storm coming, we don’t know what that will bring,” said a Con Edison veep, John Miksad.
He warned that the utility was struggling to keep its own fleet of trucks gassed up and ready to go.
“We are dealing with fuel issues just like everyone else, to keep our vehicles running,” he said.
Getting the lights back on has been complicated, too, because the infrastructures of many buildings were severely damaged by the superstorm’s massive flooding.
About 97,000 Con Ed customers in New York City are still without power, according to the utility’s latest figures.
That doesn’t include about 19,000 customers on Queens’ battered Rockaway Peninsula, which is served by the Long Island Power Authority.
The city housing projects in the Rockaways suffered significant damage. About 45,000 people live in public housing there.
“Over the past two days, we’ve been going block by block to identify the issues that are blocking power from being turned back on,” Mayor Bloomberg said.
He has been pressuring LIPA to restore power to those still blacked out.
“LIPA has agreed to our request to add more crews to this job,” Bloomberg said.
The embattled utility yesterday delivered 10 generators to the Hammels Houses in Rockaway Beach.
In Manhattan, about 200 buildings still aren’t ready to connect to the electrical grid, along with a handful of other sites in Brooklyn, because their own equipment is too damaged, according to Con Ed.
Seven city schools were also too damaged to accept electricity.
For Manhattan, that translates into about 5,000 customers without power.
At the height of the outages, about 750,000 customers in the city were without power.
A customer can be a single home or a commercial or apartment building (for power to hallways, lobbies, basements, etc.).
In advance of the work week beginning today, Con Ed pleaded with people in Manhattan — residents and business owners — to conserve power. Crews are reinforcing damaged underground systems, and the utility fears straining the system.
Specifically, it asks people not to run their washers or dryers.
It also asked building owners to limit their use of elevators but said everyday business operations can continue.
“We are telling them to run their business, do want they need to do,” Miksad said.
About 657,000 customers remain without electricity statewide, down from 2.2 million Tuesday when Sandy struck.
“I will hold the electric companies totally accountable, 100 percent,” for what gets done when, Cuomo said.
Officials warned those without power to be careful with their candles and not go to sleep with them still burning.
The FDNY has already responded to six fires started by candles over the past week, officials said.
Long Island still faced a grim picture, with about 316,000 customers out of power and a restoration target of this coming Sunday.
“I don’t think we are going to have power anytime soon,” said Carmen Crisi, 43, of Island Park, which was devastated by the storm. “I mean, look around you. It’s just disaster. No one on this block has any power, any gas, and it’s started to get cold.”
“Not anytime soon” was a common refrain.
“For the first time last night, we started to shiver,” said Mike McCullough, 18, of Lindenhurst. “We need to get some attention down here. It just seems like there is no end in sight. There is not a reason to hope things will be up and running anytime soon.”
There were about 85,000 customers without power in Westchester and another 18,000 in Orange County and 35,000 in Rockland County.
“If there’s any silver lining in all of this, it’s that New Yorkers came out to help one another,” Cuomo said. “The perception of New Yorker’s is that we are tough, but we’re also kind and giving. We’re a special breed.”
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg