Lower Manhattan lit up with joy yesterday as the lights trickled back on.
Just before 5 p.m., the East Village and Lower East Side were the first hurricane-darkened neighborhoods put back on line by Con Ed crews.
An hour later, power was restored to Chelsea, as overjoyed residents overcame their anger at Con Ed and began planning Friday night parties.
“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.
“I’ve never been so happy to see a street light. And just in time for Friday night. Time to celebrate!” said Lower East Side resident Steve Hernandez.
The power restoration emptied out Welcome to the Johnsons, a bar on Rivington Street.
“It was like, ‘Power’s back — let’s go home!’ ” said Andrew Fee, 30. “Everyone is so happy. It’s been a wasteland around here.”
Power was back at 7 p.m. to 8,800 customers in the City Hall neighborhood and 30,000 customers near Madison Square.
The Cooper Square network was also restored last night and Con Ed planned to have the Fulton and Bowling Green networks up by 8 a.m. today, a company spokesman said.
The neighborhoods restored last night came back sooner than Con Ed’s vow that it would restore southern Manhattan late today.
Amid the joy, some 97,000 power-starved Con Ed customers in Manhattan were still without electricity.
And the restoration came after West Village and Chelsea residents were cruelly jolted by a 2 p.m. Con Ed robocall that falsely stated their power was back.
Stephen Savage, manager of The Tipsy Parson bar in Chelsea, ran home in gleeful excitement when he got the call. When he got to his apartment, all was the same — no lights, no electricity.
Con Ed lost more customers in Manhattan than anyplace else — yesterday morning, more than 226,000 customers in the borough woke up powerless.
Elsewhere, by midnight, Con Ed had pared back the number of customer outages to 83,000 in Queens, 43,000 on Staten Island, 32,000 in Brooklyn and 25,000 in The Bronx.
Westchester still had 110,400 Con Ed customers without power.
About 465,000 Long Island Power Authority customers remained without power late yesterday, and nearly 1.5 million New Jerseyans lacked juice.
Additional reporting by Aaron Feis and Carl Campanile