WPCNR THE POWER NEWS. March 17, 2010: As of 10:15 A.M. E.D.T., Con Edison's Storm Center reports 24,299 Westchester customers are still without power as the electric powerup continues into Day 4 with hundreds of out-of-state power crews coming to the County's rescue. Most of the out-of-state help arrived yesterday morning and more are expected today swelling the "connection force" to 675 crews.

The hardest hit communities continue to suffer, though outages have been reduced approximately 40% to 50%  in Yonkers, Greenburgh, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Scarsdale and White Plains. Yonkers currently has 7,147 customers disconnected; Mount Vernon,6,604; Greenburgh, 6,386; Scarsdale, 3,355; and White Plains, 1,626.

Running down the Con Edison list, many of the rural villages in northern Westchester are in the single digits, with the more populous areas from the center of the county to the Bronx still suffer outages in the hundreds, though down significantly from earlier in the week numbers.

Ardsley reports 60 out; Bedford, 22; Briarcliff/Ossining, 544; Bronxville,353; Dobbs Ferry,549; Eastchester 2,034;Elmsford,464; Harrison,1,535; Hastings,469; Irvington, 2,040; Larchmont/Mamaroneck, 526; Mount Pleasant,872; New Castle,73; North Castle, 536; The Tarrytowns, 1,176;The Pelhams, 93; Pleasantville,76; Port Chester, 409; Rye City, 1,874.

Rob Astorino, the Westchester County Executive, who lives in Mount Pleasant had his power restored within eight hours by Sunday evening,  according to The Journal News, although Mount Pleasant as of Monday morning had 649 customers still out, one of the lower totals compared to the major cities and of course, Scarsdale.  Mr.Astorino was quoted in the Journal News today as saying, "I do think at this point Con Ed has been responding pretty well." It was Astorino's first comment on Con Edison's emergency performance, other than saying Westchester would be applying for disaster aid.

Today, Con Edison made this statement to the media:

Con Edison, with an assist from out-of-state utility crews and contractors, has placed nearly 147,000 electrical customers back in service since last weekend’s devastating wind and rainstorm.

“We’ve made significant progress, but we won’t be satisfied until every one of our customers is back in service,” said John Miksad, senior vice president of Electric Operations.  “We will have even more out-of-state utility crews on the streets today and expect to see the number of outages drop significantly again by this evening.”

As of 6 a.m. today, approximately 26,000 customers remained without power.  The areas most affected were Westchester, where approximately 24,000 customers were out, and Staten Island, where fewer than 1,200 remained without service. The Bronx has about 700 customers out of service.

Thousands of company support personnel are continuing to work around the clock to help the crews that are addressing the most destructive rain and windstorm to hit New York City and Westchester in decades.

Restoration crews are expected to swell to 675 today as the additional out-of-state utility crews arrive.  Utilities from Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky and Massachusetts are assisting Con Edison’s crews. 

The company expects to have all storm-related outages in the Bronx restored by this afternoon, followed by Staten Island on Thursday evening, and Westchester on Friday.  All Brooklyn and Queens customers affected by the storm have been restored.