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Community Corner

After the Storm, Con Edison Crews Finally Leave Rye

Con Edison set up a Mobile Emergency Center at Playland and dispatched more than 2,000 workers during the past week to repair storm damage in the Rye area.

The sign at the entrance to Rye Playland says: "Vacation Close to Home at Rye Playland."

But in the amusement park parking lot close to that sign it was anything but a vacation site close to home because the lot became a mini-MASH-style tent city of sorts -- a Consolidated Edison Emergency Staging Center for more than 2,000 Con Ed workers in Westchester in the aftermath of the recent Nor'easter.

They had come in response to what experts called the worst storm  to hit the area in 30 years in terms of wind and storm damage. The yellow blinking sign off Forest Avenue and Playland Parkway directed the out-of-towners to the staging area.

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They came from as far away as Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North  Carolina and Massachusetts and as near as various parts of Westchester and New York City. There were around 700 emergency crews in all responding to what Con Ed initially reported as 105,561 outages in Westchester and New York City, making it one of the worst storms Con Ed had seen in about 30 years, surpassing the  local impact of Hurricane Gloria 1n 1985.

The emergency workers were housed in various area hotels such as the Rye Town Hilton, and the nearby Renaissance and Marriott. But they assembled for work each day at Playland, where the parking lot was filled with trucks, port-o-potties, back hoes, and what looked likes miles of coiled rubberized snakes, mound upon mound of gold and silver serpentine hardware, hoses and coils and the like along with telephone poles and all kinds of emergency equipment.

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"I was walking my dogs at Playland Saturday morning and the parking lot looked like a tent city filled with hundreds of trucks, crews, a huge mobile command center and probably hundreds of workers," said Rye resident Steve Mochel.

It all made for an eery Oz-like silhouette against the backdrop of the Dragon Coaster and the various thrill rides at Playland when Patch checked out the area Saturday afternoon. That was after the worst of the storm had passed, because by this past weekend, Con Ed was disassembling its Mobile Emergency Center.

It was like bringing down a circus Big Top and there was only a skeleton crew on hand. There were people, like cigar-stomping Ernie from Georgia and ultra-polite Steve from Massachusetts, working on lingering post-storm odds and ends.

Ernie was leading a crew that was assembling the equipment for warehousing, and Steve was checking out the bare necessities needed for remaining "ticket" items where there was still work to be done in and around Rye. They couldn't give last names because they weren't authorized to speak for Con Ed but the utility company's emergency center spokesman, Chris Olert, could.

Olert said he was proud of what Con Ed accomplished in a week's time in the aftermath of the Nor'easter. He said Con Ed started pouring emergency workers into Westchester during the weekend of March 13-14 when the region was drenched with around 2.76 inches of rain during a 48-hour period when gusts of wind reached up to 62 miles per hour at Westchester County Airport, causing wind damage and power outages that would soar to more than 100,000 power outages in Westchester and New York City.

"We set a goal to have all power restored by March 19, and we did," Olert told Patch.

"We handed out more than 65,000 pounds  of dry ice to customers without refrigeration while we struggled to get the power back, something that wasn't easy because fallen trees frequently blocked our way into hard-hit areas and we couldn't get our equipment in until the various  public works departments cut those trees and removed them from the roads," Olert said. "But we all worked together and the job got done."

Olert said Con Edison needed all the manpower it could muster to repair damage from the storm.

"Among other things, we had to replace more than 150 utility poles, and 650 cross arms (those horizontal bars on top of the telephone poles), and used 150,000 feet of cable," Olert said. "We replaced 125 transformers, had to take down and cut up more than 1,500 trees, and had something like 700 crews working 12-14 hour shifts, and when we had the situation under control in Brooklyn and Queens, we imported more crews into Westchester from NYC."

"It wasn't easy, but we got the job done, and some of the Con Ed veterans on the  job a lot longer than I have said it was the worst storm they had seen in terms of wind damage and power outages in 30 years," he added.

Rye Mayor Doug French said the same thing verbatim regarding the storm while praising Con Edison, among others, for their ongoing and prompt response in getting the city up and running.

Meanwhile, back in the Playland parking lot, Ernie and Steve and their Con Ed skeleton crew were surveying the parking lot like stage hands striking a Broadway set, itemizing all the equipment that was still needed for what they called "the repair and restoration of an electrical system," trying to figure out what was still necessary to handle any last minute isolated "ticket items" that still required work.

"It's all part of the job, you do what you gotta do," Ernie said. 

"But what a job it has been," Steve added. 

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