Five Towns slammed with rain, high winds

Saturday’s Nor’easter that featured Tropical Storm force winds wreaked havoc on the Five Towns area with thousands of power outages reported by the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and train service suspended on the Far Rockaway branch.

As of 11:50 a.m. Sunday morning there were 6,041 LIPA customers in the Five Towns area still without power. The power outages resulting from the severe storm included all 2,031 customers serviced in Atlantic Beach, according to LIPA. Cedarhurst was also hard hit with 1,629 outages reported late Sunday morning out of 3,182 customers serviced in the village.

Power lines also went down near the Gibson train station forcing the Far Rockaway branch of the Long Island Rail Road to shut down for several hours over the weekend. As of late Sunday morning buses were replacing trains between the Valley Stream station and the other stops on the LIRR branch, which includes Gibson, Hewlett, Woodmere, Cedarhurst, Lawrence and Far Rockaway.

LIPA issued the following report Sunday morning:

March 14, 2010, 09:00AM: LIPA and National Grid Crews are working diligently to address downed power lines and to restore power to customers affected by last nights’ treacherous storm. Hurricane force winds and heavy rain have interrupted service to approximately 222,000 customers on Long Island. As of 09:00 am Sunday, power to more than half of the affected customers has been restored. All available crews will continue to work around the clock to restore the remaining outages. Additional manpower continues to be secured from neighboring utilities to support the restoration effort.

Long duration outages are expected to last throughout the day and customers should call 1-800-490-0075 to report an outage and to receive information updates.