Two-and-a-half months removed from its grand opening, the DeCicco Family Market in Cross River has already been forced to close twice ”“ for nearly a week each time ”“ due to two unusually powerful storms that knocked out electricity to large swaths of Westchester.
And while Tropical Storm Irene made her presence widely known before making landfall in New York Aug. 28, the Halloween weekend nor”™easter that dropped more than a foot of snow in some parts of Westchester had many people fooled ”“ including New York State Electric and Gas, Frank DeCicco said.
“This was a shock. We didn”™t get any response from them (NYSEG). The computer tells us something will be done by such-and-such a date and that”™s all they tell us. It”™s very disappointing,” said DeCicco, manager of the new store in Cross River and one of the founding principals of DeCicco Family Markets. “I know this New York State Electric and Gas ”“ they”™re really not very helpful at all.”
With upward of 65 percent of the grocer”™s stock needing to be refrigerated, DeCicco said the store had no choice but to throw away large quantities of items after both storms while it waited for power to be restored. He estimated that each storm cost the store “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” While DeCicco”™s has insurance, he said he didn”™t know yet the amount of damage it would cover.
The store has a generator to power some lights and a handful of cash registers, but following each storm DeCicco had refrigerated trailers brought in to preserve as much food as they could hold. However, he said that with much of the surrounding areas in the same predicament, the store saw few customers during both extended outages.
“Nobody”™s buying anything because they can”™t cook it,” DeCicco said. “It happened twice, exactly two months apart.”
The DeCicco Family Market was far from the only business impacted by the lengthy outages. On Nov. 4, state Sen. Greg Ball, R, C-40th District, called for hearings into the slow response time and demanded accountability from NYSEG.
“We should have learned a lot of lessons from Irene. After Irene we began to conduct investigations into NYSEG”™s response time. Those investigations will now continue after the lack of response in this instance,” Ball said at a press conference in Yorktown.
Ball also said he had proposed legislation that would prohibit a foreign entity from having a controlling stake in a utility company in New York state. Iberdrola USA, a subsidiary of Spanish energy company Iberdrola S.A., acquired NYSEG in 2008.
NYSEG spokesman James Salmon attributed the lengthy power restoration times to the volume of downed trees and branches that he said made it difficult for crews to access all of its service areas.
Underground wiring debated
While many business owners and residents affected by the recent storms have proposed redirecting overhead wires underground ”“ an idea Ball heartily endorsed ”“ officials from both NYSEG and Con Edison, which provides electricity to much of Westchester and the Bronx, said the costs were prohibitively high.
“Especially in northern Westchester County, there”™s a significant amount of rocks and that would make it a very, very expensive task,” Salmon said.
He cited a 2009 study by the Edison Electric Institute that said the cost of converting overhead power lines to underground lines ranges from $80,000 per mile in rural areas to $2.13 million per mile in urban areas. Salmon added that the cost of repairs to underground lines would run much higher than for overhead lines.
Con Edison spokesman Alfonso Quiroz said running lines underground “is something that has been brought up many times before,” but “from what we”™ve researched and found it really is cost prohibitive.”
While neither Con Edison nor NYSEG could estimate what the most recent storm would cost in repairs, Quiroz said Tropical Storm Irene, which hit New York in late August, had cost Con Edison nearly $48 million in repairs and capital replacement costs. He added the company typically budgets $5.6 million annually for expected storm-related repairs.
Insurers hit as well
Following the second major storm to hit the Northeast in as many months, insurance companies have been slammed by rising costs associated with storm damage and claims.
“It”™s been a frightening period for the insurance companies because the losses keep coming in. It”™ll be a long time for this storm before the losses all come in,” said Patrick Walsh, president of the Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services Inc.”™s White Plains location.
In a preliminary estimate, Moody”™s Analytics Inc. projected the total cost to insurers stemming from the Halloween weekend storm at more than $1 billion for the six-state region that was affected.
Walsh said it had been a particularly unpredictable storm season.
“In addition to the losses that you”™re seeing from hurricanes and things they can predict, you”™re seeing a bunch of unpredictable losses. The first 10 months of the year have not been very positive for any of the insurance companies. They”™re losing their shirts when it comes to the premiums they have versus the losses they”™re paying.”
