Con Ed, PSEG Scramble After Blizzard; Bronx and Queens Face Longest Power Wait

An unusually severe winter storm has exposed New York’s perennial vulnerability to disruption, testing utilities and the patience of millions.

The 70-mile-an-hour gusts that toppled utility poles and snow-laden trees from the Jersey Shore to Long Island on February 23rd forced hundreds of thousands to reacquaint themselves with flashlights, candles and the unreliable ballet of estimated restoration times. By twilight on Monday, the epicentre of the latest nor’easter’s wrath sat in New Jersey. Nearly 40,000 Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) customers were still in the dark, even as linemen—some dispatched from as far as Ohio—scrambled over snowbanks to restring wires.

For New Yorkers and their neighbours across the river, electrical outages felt less like an inconvenience and more like a rude reintroduction to the sudden precarity on which city life teeters. Con Edison, the primary utility for New York City, called Monday’s events “challenging,” but wagered that power would return for most Staten Island and Manhattan households before bedtime. In the Bronx, patience would need to stretch until Tuesday morning; Brooklyn and Queens would not be lit up before Tuesday afternoon.

Long Island bore the brunt of the tempest, with the Public Service Electric & Gas Company (PSEG) reporting that about 5,000 homes in Nassau and Suffolk counties shivered into Monday evening without heat or light. In a small mercy, the majority of the 54,000 outages PSEG faced since Sunday were slated for restoration by Tuesday morning. For many in the Rockaways and across the region’s coastal fringe, no such concrete timeline was forthcoming.

The immediate implications for the metropolis are both prosaic and profound. For the city’s millions—accustomed as we are to the stealthy hum of 24-hour infrastructure—this latest blackout means spoilt groceries, cold apartments, and the perverse luxury of silence imposed by grid failure. Public schools delayed their opening hours, forcing yet another logistical pirouette from harried parents. Hospitals, nursing homes and care facilities fired up backup generators, stretching their disaster plans yet again.

For businesses struggling to regain momentum post-pandemic, the storm’s toll comes larded atop old wounds. Retailers and small restaurants—many without gas service—face revenue lost to shuttered doors and spoiled inventory, only partially reimbursed by insurance. Gig workers, whose livelihoods depend on reliably charged phones and functioning subway signals, feel the sting acutely. Winter’s economic bite, in a city built for relentless commerce, runs deeper than frozen sidewalks suggest.

The consequences ricochet across public budgets and political fortunes. Governor Mikie Sherrill’s announcement that 5,000 linemen had been mobilised—many beckoned from out of state—was meant to project command. Yet, the fragility underscored by each new outage will not be so easily dispelled. Utilities can cite progress, but frustration festers when the next storm portends identical carnage. A decade after Superstorm Sandy, the energy grid remains far from stormproof.

Nor is New York alone in its malaise. Across America, extreme weather—once a rarity, now routine—exposes infrastructural crevices. While the upper Midwest boasts resilient, if Spartan, power lines and redundant supplies, coastal cities like New York continue to grapple with puny investments in undergrounding lines and tree management. Texas’ grid collapse in 2021 prompted national soul-searching; New York’s tepid response is a lesson in the risk of incrementalism.

Climate’s costly knock-on effects, and the uphill battle for resilience

Recent years have brought new urgency to the problem. The state’s Public Service Commission quotes staggering sums: burying all New York City power lines would cost upwards of $60bn, a bill that would balloon rates for already squeezed customers. Yet, the longer the city defers large-scale fortification, the more likely that outages will become part of the urban landscape, rather than rare aberrations.

Meanwhile, insurance claims are already stacking up, and municipal budgets, burdened by overtime for emergency workers, are nudged toward chronic deficit. For policymakers touting the virtues of green energy transition, the uncomfortable reality is that decarbonisation brings its own reliability headaches—solar panels blanketed by snow, wind turbines rendered inert by ice. The march towards electrification demands a more rugged grid than presently exists.

Globally, New York’s power woes pale next to the ceaseless blackouts of parts of South Asia or Africa. Yet, the gap between the city’s vaunted financial or cultural capital and its basic infrastructure is growing harder to ignore. Cities from Tokyo to Zurich have largely seized the nettle, investing in buried lines and redundancies, even if the bill is steep. For New Yorkers, the question looms whether the region is content to weather each storm with portable chargers and stoical shrugs.

In a metropolis where subways, schools and businesses expect reliability, the cost of inaction may prove stiffer than the sticker shock of upgrades. Data marshalled since Sandy suggests every dollar spent on storm hardening saves two to six in avoided future costs. But American jurisdictions, riven by political Balkanisation and competing budgetary priorities, default to patchwork rather than overhaul.

We reckon the most recent storm’s inconvenience will soon fade from memory, replaced by the city’s perennial amnesia. Yet, as nor’easters arrive with growing regularity and ferocity—fueled, according to climatologists, by a warming Atlantic—the odds favour recurrence. If New Yorkers prize their frenetic routines and reliable luxuries, they may finally need to surrender to the notion that the humdrum business of resilience cannot be put off indefinitely.

The flicker and hum of restored power is, no doubt, reassuring. But each blackout is, quietly, another awkward reminder: the world city has some catching up to do. ■