More than 20,000 people woke up without power on Monday morning.
There were more than 50,000 people in the dark at the height of the outages. Con Ed purposely took 30,000 customers off line, saying it was necessary to make repairs and prevent even bigger outages.
The utility started bringing customers back 500 at a time around midnight Monday. But Mayor Bill de Blasio said it was a slow process because they didn’t want to overload the system.
“It's still hot and people have a right to be frustrated. We're pushing Con Ed to get power back as fast as possible,” Mayor de Blasio tweeted.
Con Ed also urged people to conserve power on Monday to ease the strain on the grid.
"We've been through this situation w[ith] ConEd time & again & they should have been better prepared—period,” Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted.
The governor said he was deploying state police and equipment to assist with the power outages.
Temperatures rose close to 100 on both Saturday and Sunday, with the humidity making it feel even hotter. There is some relief on Monday, with temperatures dipping into the low 80s with a chance for rain.
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