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As of 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Central Hudson was reporting around 500 active outages, impacting more than 41,000 of the company’s Hudson Valley customers.
The bulk of the outages were in Ulster County, where there were 38,494 outages, affecting nearly half of the company’s customers, while there were an additional 2,353 in Dutchess, and 22 in Orange County.
With sleet, freezing rain, and wintry weather are expected to continue into the afternoon, the utility expects additional outages to occur during the day, Central Hudson officials noted.
Restoration activities are expected to extend into Saturday, Feb. 5, and possibly Sunday, Feb. 6.
“Central Hudson’s crews are working to make repairs and restore power to our customers as safely and quickly as possible,” Central Hudson Vice President of Electric Engineering and Operations Ryan Hawthorne said. “In addition to our full complement of internal crews and contractors, we’re expecting mutual aid from Indiana, northern Pennsylvania, and upstate New York by mid-day today.
“In total, Central Hudson expects to have a field force of more than 400 line and tree professionals working to address more than 400 individual damage locations. We will continue to pursue additional mutual aid resources to speed restoration and expect more will be available as weather conditions improve.”
Orange & Rockland County Utilities says about 200 customers were without power at around 10:30 a.m. Friday.
The storm began with rain throughout the Hudson Valley on Thursday, Feb. 3 before turning into a wintry mix overnight.
Hawthorne said that ice accumulations in many areas caused tree limbs to break and fall onto powerlines, and that freezing rain and snow in the forecast, the most heavily impacted areas are expected to extend through the weekend.
“These powerful storms have come in waves and left significant damage in their wake,” he said. "We know how critical it is to restore service to our customers and we appreciate their patience as we continue to make progress.”
NYSEG was also reporting outages in Dutches (three), Orange (405) Putnam (six), Sullivan (two), Ulster (14), and Westchester (23) counties, while Orange & Rockland Utilities was responding to 11 outages affecting 114 Hudson Valley customers.
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