State Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, is calling on the city and state to provide further resources to his district in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s visit.
The senator wants Gov. Andrew Cuomo to provide more aid to Queens and has called on the state’s Public Service Commission to investigate how Con Edison allocated resources after the effects of the hurricane are addressed.
“It is absolutely disgraceful that there are still trees blocking city streets,” Avella said. “There are many trees on people’s homes who have not been contacted by the city and there are thousands upon thousands of people in Queens without power.”
The senator said he believed Con Edison’s estimated number of people without power in Queens to be understated.
“The actual numbers are probably three to four times as many customers without power,” he said.
Con Edison could not immediately be reached for comment.
The senator also wrote a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg to complain about the utility’s response to the borough.
“Residents who have called Con Ed to report an outage have been told by Con Edison employees that Queens will be one of the last boroughs to have electricity restored – Manhattan and Brooklyn first,” he wrote. “Many residents have fallen trees on their homes, seniors and residents with health issues do not have power, trees are still blocking streets with live wires and yet no attention seems to be forthcoming.”
In a statement Thursday, Con Edison said it had restored power to an estimated 225,000 city residents following Sandy’s departure.
