He’s had regrets, but Hurricane Sandy isn’t one of them.
Outgoing LIPA chief Michael Hervey says he’s not sorry for much of anything, not the downed power lines, not the cold bedrooms, not the lousy estimates or the endless time on hold with customer service.
“I wish we could have communicated outage time better to customers,” the embattled agency head said. “If we had the information, we would have communicated it.’’
Hervey, easily among the most hated men on Long Island and the Rockaways, blamed the foul-up, similar to what happened last year during Irene, on an outdated outage-management system.
Hervey announced his retirement from the troubled agency, just two weeks after the wrecking-ball storm devastated the region and blacked out more than 1 million homes serviced by LIPA.
The company chief insisted his exit was not related to the storm of protests he has received since the hurricane.
“I had decided to leave back in the August time frame,” Hervey told The Post.
“Nobody has asked me to step down. It’s a matter of timing. I needed to give the board time to react to it. I had requested a resignation of Dec. 15. The board asked me to stay longer. I told them I would stay till the end of the year, but not any longer.”
Hervey said the storm — and its aftermath — did not spare his Commack home.
“The trees at my house came down before the storm was at its peak,” he said. “When I went home, there were trees down all over my area. I think it was seven or eight days without power. I really wasn’t paying close attention to it. I wasn’t home very much, and when I was, it was sort of cold and dark.”
In explaining the wide swath of outages, Hervey cited the changing storm track, the slowing of the hurricane, the bigger-than-expected storm surge and several other factors.
“The storm surge was clearly higher than was forecasted,” Hervey said.
“We saw that in our own equipment. In some of our substations, the storm surge was three or more feet higher than what had been forecast.”
Hervey said that he sympathizes with irate customers.
“I have steadfastly said that we understand what our customers are going through, and we are sorry that they don’t have power,” Hervey said.
“But, on the other hand, we’re restoring power as fast as we possibly can with every possible resource. We certainly understand the importance of electric power to our customers. It’s more than just an inconvenience when the power is not on.”