Lights go on in Queens, one block at a time

Consolidated Edison reported major progress in the week-old struggle to restore power to western Queens, but thousands faced a new workweek without electricity and frustrations boiled over as some officials called for a declaration of emergency and the resignation of the utilityÂ’s chief executive.

Kevin Burke, Con EdÂ’s chairman and chief executive, said at a 4 p.m. briefing that utility crews had restored power to nearly 16,000 of the approximately 25,000 customers affected by the blackout. In human terms, that meant that the lights, elevators, refrigerators and air-conditioners were back on for an estimated 64,000 of the 100,000 people who had suffered through the ordeal.

In a recent update, Chris Olert, a spokesman for the utility, said that by 5:45 p.m. July 24, service had been restored to more than 19,800 customers. That amounts to about 79,200 people, using a layman’s rule of thumb that counts four people for every “customer,” which could be a single home or an entire apartment building.

At a news conference at Con Edison’s headquarters in Manhattan, his second briefing of the weekend after five days of public silence, Mr. Burke said that Con Edison crews were working around the clock “street by street, manhole by manhole, to get all the customers back in service.”

The dwindling numbers suggested that the end might soon be in sight, but Con Edison has come under a barrage of criticism as having grossly underestimated the extent of the blackout, especially in the first few days.

Mr. Burke insisted that he could still provide no estimate of when full power might be restored to eight square miles of Astoria, Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside, Hunters Point and other sections. Underground cables had burned out in those areas, apparently overloaded by the utilityÂ’s decision to keep the power flowing to most of the 400,000 residents of western Queens despite the loss of 10 major feeder cables that power the area.

That decision meant that all of the areaÂ’s power was running through only 12 feeder cables, and through transformers and secondary cables that were not designed to take such a heavy load.

Mr. Burke said he had no explanation for why the 10 major cables went down while Con EdisonÂ’s 56 other feeder cable networks continued to work. The root cause of the blackout, one of the cityÂ’s most prolonged in decades, is under investigation by the utility itself and by the Queens district attorneyÂ’s office, the City Council and the stateÂ’s Public Service Commission.

Mr. Burke did offer another mea culpa. “I want to give special thanks to the residents of northwest Queens for their incredible patience during a very difficult week,” he said. “Again, I apologize to the people who live there. We are not happy with what is happening out there. But we are doing our best to get the lights back.”

But some elected officials were not satisfied. “The time for explanation and apologies is over,” Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat of New York, said at another news conference. He declared that the blackout had grown to “disastrous proportions.”

City Councilman Eric Gioia, a Democrat who represents much of the blackout area, said that “the people of Queens have gone from frustrated to angry to scared.”

He added, “I am gravely concerned that there will be fatalities because of this crisis.”

While city officials said the blackout had caused no deaths or serious injuries, the family of Andres Rodriguez, 60, an Astoria painter found dying in his car recently, blamed the power failure and three sleepless nights in a sweltering apartment for his death.

“The heat was definitely affecting him,” said his son, Andres G. Rodriguez. The man’s wife, Maria, said she found him “suffocating in the car".

But Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the cityÂ’s chief medical examiner, said that Mr. Rodriguez had a history of heart disease and diabetes and evidently died of natural causes.

She said he did not appear to have suffered hyperthermia, which she called a temperature over 105 degrees. An autopsy will be conducted if the family requests one, she said.

As thousands of blackout victims, particularly the elderly and infirm, suffered through a seventh day in darkened, stifling homes and apartments, the anger and frustration that many have felt found expression in a group of Queens political leaders recently.

At a news conference in Sunnyside, Representative Crowley, Councilman Gioia, State Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris and Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan, all Democrats who represent constituents in the blackout area, called on Gov. George E. Pataki to designate western Queens a disaster area and request federal emergency aid, including generators and even National Guard troops if necessary.

“If this were an area of 100,000 people in upstate New York, the governor would have declared it a disaster area,” Mr. Crowley said.

Saleem Cheeks, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, did not respond directly to the call for a declaration of disaster, but he said the governor had been monitoring the situation closely, had spoken to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the cityÂ’s emergency management officials and had offered any necessary assistance.

Con Edison has pledged to reimburse residents up to $350 for spoiled food and other damages, and the city has promised to assist small businesses affected.