O&R restores power to over 50 percent of customers - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

Orange & Rockland Power says it has restored over 50% of the 250,000 customers who lost electric service as a result of Hurricane Sandy.  

Field crews have repaired 26 of O&R's 27 damaged transmission lines, and 61 of its 101 downed distribution circuits. Tens of thousands of customers each day are expected to get their power back on until everyone returns to service.

Crews and equipment from California were air-lifted by military transport to Stewart Airport in Newburgh Friday and will be joining O&R today. O&R anticipates the arrival of National Guard troops Saturday morning. The National Guard's main focus will be helping to clear roads and ensure that areas with downed wires remain safe. This will also help the power company reassign more O&R employees to contribute directly to restoration work.  

Approximately 120,000 O&R customers remain without service. The vast majority of our customers should have their electricity back on over the next week. O&R has set Nov. 11 as the estimated date by which 90 percent of its customers' service should be restored.  

O&R will begin posting more location-specific estimates of when power will be restored to neighborhoods and individuals by the end of weekend.   

About 80 percent of O&R's 300,000-customer base lost power in the hurricane that ripped down miles of wire, toppled thousands of trees and snapped hundreds of poles. O&R sustained damage at 10,000 separate locations resulting from the hurricane. 

The current numbers of outages by county are:

• Rockland:                             49,000  
• Orange:                                27,000
• Bergen:                                 30,000
• Passaic:                                 9,800
• Sullivan:                                 5,500
• Pike:                                      600
• Sussex:                                 200

O&R offers these safety tips:

• Assume any downed wire is live and dangerous. Stay away from it and call O&R at 1-877-434-4100 to report it.
• Portable generators pose a serious hazard if used improperly. They should be used and installed according to the manufacturer's instructions. A wrong connection could feed electricity back through the lines and endanger our repair crews. Never plug a generator into a wall unit, use it indoors or set it up outdoors near open home windows or air-handling vents.
• When temperatures dip and you're without power, don't use a natural gas powered oven or range to heat a room. Doing so could create either a fire hazard or a life-threatening exposure to carbon monoxide gas.