SHAME ON THE LONG ISLAND POWER AUTHORITY (yes, I'm shouting!)

Here follows a rather Shakespearean (in my opinion) letter my Dad wrote to LIPA. Note the wonderful sarcasm in the last line:

The power to 5 houses on Regent Drive in Lido Beach went out at approximately 3:30 PM on Saturday, 9/2/06. It is now 12:24 AM on Monday, 9/4/06, and the power has not yet been restored. LIPA crews have been out here three times, the first to look at the burning tree (the one that knocked the power out in the first place), the second time -I'm not sure what they did the second time they came out, but they sure as hell didn't restore power (then the tree crew came out to chop up the offending tree), then a third crew came out, actually there were two crews to replace a fuse in a transformer, and still, no power. If it sounds as though I'm angry, you are quite right. I just came in from driving around the area looking for a repair crew: none to be found in Long Beach, Lido Beach or Point Lookout, although your outage report shows a total of 89 current outages in this area. WHY AREN'T THEY WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK HERE TO RESTORE OUR POWER?????????

This was a minor storm by comparison to what could have been; is this what we can expect from our power utility in a major storm, weeks of no power (by extrapolation). I never thought LIPA would be able to make FPL look like super heroes; but you did it this time. So much for our northern expertise and sophistication!

Just being able to talk to a human would have helped us though what started as a minor inconvenience and evolved into a very major annoyance, making the calmest of us come to the brink of utter rage. Richard Kessel and company should hang their heads in shame for the complete bungling of this situation, which could probably have been minimized by proper monitoring of local trees, and the proper crowning and pruning instead of the butcher job I've seen your crews do.

It has now been 35 hours since I've been able to put up a pot of coffee or read my newspaper in the evening, or watch a movie on TV. I am able to write this only through the generosity of my next door neighbor, who just happened to be lucky enough to be on the other side of the utility pole.

SO KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, LIPA, AND DON'T BE TOO SURPRISED WHEN THE PUBLIC DEMANDS HEARINGS INTO YOUR TOTAL INEPTNESS IN HANDLING A STORM SO MINOR THAT IT DOESN'T EVEN RATE A CATEGORY!