Six million remain without power in US northeast

REUTERS: About six million homes and businesses in 15 US states remained without power on Wednesday as utilities scrambled to restore service disrupted by Hurricane Sandy, federal data showed.

The power companies had restored electricity to some 2.4 million customers in the US northeast, although the pace of recovery in New York appeared to lag behind other storm-hit states, the data showed.

At the storm’s peak impact on Tuesday, 8.48 million customers in 21 states from North Carolina to Maine and as far west as Illinois were without power after Sandy came ashore with hurricane-force winds in New Jersey late Monday, according to Department of Energy (DOE) data.                     

Power has been restored to nearly 600,000 customers in New Jersey, out of more than 2.6 million that lost power, although more than half the state still remains in the dark, according to the data as of 3 p.m. EDT.

In New York, where Sandy knocked out power to nearly a third of the customers in New York City and Westchester County, only about 150,000 customers of the total 2.1 million that lost power in the state have seen it restored, according to the figures.

The DOE did not provide any further comment or explanation for the figures.

In New York, power company Consolidated Edison Inc said about 795,000 storm-hit homes and businesses in New York City and Westchester County remained without power.

Con Edison said Sandy was the largest storm-related outage in its history. The previous record was the more than 200,000 customers affected by Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Irene left an estimated 8.38 million customers out along the U.S. East Coast from South Carolina to Maine.