Our power problems in Brooklyn culminated Friday afternoon and evening with five separate transformer explosions and fires along Vanderbilt Avenue, the first around 4.30 in the afternoon and the last about 11.30 at night. Voltage went from just under 100 in the afternoon down to about 75, then 60, and then with the final blast, went out entirely. Repeated phone calls to Con(n)Ed elicited responses ranging from "There are crews on the scene" (not true) to "There are crews on the way" (not true either) which was an improvement over the responses during the week which amounted to "What problem?"

Finally on Saturday morning a bunch of trucks showed up. The blackened Mercedes parked over one of the transformer covers was towed away and they got to work. The foreman was friendly but exasperated, saying that if they'd just assigned repair crews earlier in the week he wouldn't have this enormous job to do now. By the time I got back home around 5 on Saturday, we had full power for the first time in almost a week.

I'm going to file a claim for all the food that I had to throw out, and we'll see how that goes. The manager of the Met Food market on Vanderbilt Avenue said he didn't receive anything at all in compensation for the thousands of dollars of food he lost last summer.

Tags: con ed, nyc

The low-voltage problem continues in most of western Prospect Heights. Street lights are dim, grocery store freezers are way too warm (soupy ice cream, just the right thing for a hot and muggy night) and the elevators in most of the large apartment buildings aren't working. Hot water is intermittent as well. According to my co-op board, Con Ed is finally admitting there's a problem but they promised to have it fixed by 8pm tonight. Meanwhile, it's 10:30 and according to my UPS, incoming voltage is 97.1. (It should normally be at least 110.)

Tags: con ed, nyc
Current Music: Talking Heads, "The Overload"

For the second time in a week, we've had much lower than normal voltage in my building. Con Ed denies anything is wrong, but they said the same thing last Wednesday, and the whole neighborhood had problems and there were even power outages in Flatbush.

Tags: con ed

Sunday morning, about 2am, in a friend's car coming home from a jam. We're waiting at a red light on Broadway and Grand, and we start hearing what sounded like fireworks, only not quite. It didn't sound loud enough or close enough to be worrisome, but then my friend pointed at a column of smoke pouring out of a manhole cover just north of Canal Street. The noises were explosions happening inside the manhole; the cover itself was jumping at each "bang." We got out of there before the manhole cover decided to take off.

Tags: con ed