Power back on for 97% of National Grid customers, but Orleans still has 1,700 without electricity

Hardest hit areas may not have power back until Tuesday evening

National Grid has restored power to 97% of the nearly 221,000 upstate New York customers impacted by the windstorm over the weekend, the company said this evening.

Orleans County has the most customers without electricity as of 7 p.m. with 1,683, including 918 in the Kendall area.

Orleans is the only county in the National Grid service area that has more than 1,000 customers without electricity. Monroe has 964, Genesee is at 446 and Niagara at 543.

They are among 5,226 Grid customers in Upstate without electricity as of 7 p.m.

“While we have made steady progress, there is still work to be done and our expanded field force will continue to work around the clock to ensure every customer’s service is restored as safely and quickly as possible,” said Matt Barnett, National Grid’s Vice President of New York Electric Operations.

He noted that the remaining outages are in regions that experienced the most extensive storm damage, including Erie, Genesee, Monroe, Orleans and Niagara counties in western New York, and Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties in northern New York.

“Our crews are in these regions continuing the hand-to-hand combat of cleanup, reconstruction and restoration,” he said. “We understand the inconvenience of being without power and will continue to restore service hour by hour.”

Genesee Region of Genesee, Orleans and Monroe counties experienced the most extensive storm damage. Crews are in the field restoring service hour by hour and 95% of customers in these areas will have service restored by 5 p.m. Tuesday, with the remaining customers in the hardest-hit communities seeing power restored through Tuesday evening, National Grid said.