For the record we didn’t get power back completely until yesterday afternoon. Granted we did get it back for about 5 hours on Tuesday. This relief was short-lived when an explosion near the manholes up the block took everything down again. So today with the power of electricity I stumbled upon this article.
Here are some key lines:

Power company Con Edison initially said fewer than 2,000 customers were affected, but it increased that number tenfold Friday morning to 25,000 customers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated that would translate to about 100,000 people considering that each “customer” could be more than one household in an area where homes are often sectioned into multiple units, and could even be an entire apartment building.

“The sad thing is, this shouldn’t have happened,” Bloomberg said. “We don’t know why, but the most important thing — make sure nobody dies or gets hurt and then help Con Ed to get it back up.”

Some of our neighbors called ConEd just to be told they wouldn’t even have an estimate for the length of outage till the next morning. The best part, no one worked on our block the entire night of Tuesday. Not one ConEd Guy. As the pictures show our block was literally on fire twice. How could they not be working on our block?

Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said the revised number followed a block-by-block cable inspection in northwest Queens on Thursday night. It said previous estimates came from the number of customers who called to complain.

I guess this is how the block by block check will go… Genius.

Yesterday was by far the hottest day of my life.

As the power on AC began to flicker, I knew something wasn’t quite right. I started powering everything down (in order of necessity, AC, TV, then Stereo) and then I started to smell smoke. Thinking that I probably caught the buidling on fire I looked out the window and to my horror I saw a cloud of smoke. At this point I was pretty sure the building was on fire so I gathered a couple items and headed outside to find a scene that can only happen on the hottest day ever…

The power-lines the entire length of the block were literally on fire. Flaming hot red fire. The extent of the fire was enough to bring down one of the power-lines and melt the instillation on the others. I actually saw a manhole cover smoking. At this point the fireman started yelling at people to get out of their buildings. I decided to head to the bar in hopes of finding some dark cool area to rest. At this point it was probably around 100 degrees out.

When I got home last night around midnight Con-Edison had taken over for the Fire Department and was still working on the entire block, focusing on the smoking manhole. We had touch and go power through the night, which means touch and go AC. At this point were still not back to full power. I type this as I sit in front of the AC that is connected to an outlet in another room via an extension cord. Obviously I don’t believe in being part of the solution when it comes to the heat.

*Note: Click on the images below to view larger images.

Side Note: Today’s actually supposed to be hotter, I don’t believe that’s scientifically possible but we’ll see…