Hurricane Laura Approaches Long Island

Thursday, August 27th

PSEG Long Island has social distancing plans in place to restore power safely and as quickly as possible

PSEG Long Island is monitoring thunderstorms forecasted for later today and the remnants of Hurricane Laura expected to pass through the service area Saturday. The weather system today is expected to bring heavy rains and thunderstorms with peak gusts of 50 to 65 mph. The heavy rain, lightning and gusty winds may cause tree limbs to break and pull down wires, causing outages. As the remnants of Hurricane Laura progress north, additional plans will be adjusted for Saturday.

“We are closely monitoring the two weather systems and will have a full complement of personnel to respond safely and as quickly as possible to any service interruptions it may cause,” said John O’Connell, PSEG Long Island’s vice president of Transmission and Distribution Operations.

Additional crews from both local and off-Island resources are being procured to work alongside PSEG Long Island’s highly trained line personnel to quickly and safely restore power to customers. In addition, based on the experiences during Tropical Storm Isaias, we have made configuration and capacity changes to our phone system; rolled back our outage management system to a previous more stable version; and put processes in place to continuously monitor our IT systems for capacity and bottleneck issues.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, PSEG Long Island remains committed to providing safe, reliable electric service, strong storm response and excellent customer service,” O’Connell said. “We have adapted our storm procedures to follow public health best practices and accommodate for other potential industrywide changes. As our personnel operate under these unusual circumstances to safely restore power as quickly as possible, we thank our customers for their patience and understanding.”

The safety of PSEG Long Island’s customers and employees is the company’s top priority. We ask that customers remain in their homes while crews are working nearby. If customers must speak with our crews, we ask that they practice responsible “social distancing” and remain at least 6 feet away to ensure the health of everyone involved. For more information about how PSEG Long Island continues to live up to its commitments during the pandemic, please visit www.psegliny.com/covid19.