To mark the passing of six months since Hurricane Sandy, Five Towns Patch asked Five Towns community and elected officials to reflect on the storm.
The following was written and submitted to Patch by Town of Hempstead Councilman Anthony Santino.
Just six short months ago, Hurricane Sandy left its menacing mark on our entire community. Few were spared the superstorm’s wrath. Fierce winds, a monstrous storm surge and flooding caused the loss of homes, cars, furniture, and perhaps most importantly, priceless and irreplaceable memories. Neighbors endured crushing hardships and are still overcoming huge hurdles all in restoring some semblance of normalcy to their lives.
Mother Nature’s wrath hardly left any in my councilmatic district and across all the Five Towns untouched. But worse, the Long Island Power Authority failed their hardworking, honest ratepayers. There is no excuse for LIPA’s lack of preparation for both Sandy and their sustained power outages lasting days — and, in some cases, more than several weeks.
Virtually all of us suffered the fate of losing power for an inexcusable extended period of time because of the inability — and unpreparedness — of the Long Island Power Authority to adequately get ready for this storm. The LIPA Board of Trustees, appointed by the governor, and its management did not only fail to learn any valuable lessons over the past three weather catastrophes, but also fell far short of running an even tangible recovery operation to restore power to more than 1.2 million people on Long Island left in the dark.
While my office received approximately 2,500 direct contacts from constituents having to do with Sandy and its after-affects — to which we responded to every call, fax, e-mail and Facebook post or message I received — their needs to be major fixes and soon to LIPA. Reforming this agency plagued with problems and customer satisfaction troubles will hopefully ensure neighbors aren’t left in the dark the next time a storm affects our area.
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