Families across Long Island still facing problems with PSEG LI in the wake of thousands of restorations

Melissa Shenkman says a melted, mangled light bulb fell out of her ceiling Tuesday night while cooking dinner after power was restored in her Plainview home. She said after it hit the floor, there were sparks and smoke.

News 12 Staff

Aug 13, 2020, 9:11 PM

Updated 1,518 days ago

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A week and a half after Isaias left over 400,000 without power on Long Island, PSEG LI has made restorations with most of their customers. But the utility is now being blamed for an incident that caused a family to flee their home.
Melissa Shenkman says a melted, mangled light bulb fell out of her ceiling Tuesday night while cooking dinner after power was restored in her Plainview home. She said after it hit the floor, there were sparks and smoke.
"I grabbed my kids and the dog and ran out of the house barefoot. I called the fire department, they came very quickly," says Shenkman. "They shut off my circuit breaker and told us that we needed to have an electrician come."
Shenkman says her electrician told her that a disconnected wire grounds her house to the utility pole. She says she was told that the negligence of the situation was on the part of PSEG LI and could've started a fire.
In Roslyn, the small neighborhood of Hamilton Park with 162 homes lost power, but it was restored four days later. Then, residents say power went out again for 58 homes Tuesday and they were still in the dark for awhile.
Sherry Wang is one of the 58 without power. She says while crews may be trying to fix the problem, there is a bigger problem in the neighborhood.
"I've lived here for 31 years. We almost every single year, we have an outage, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few hours," says Wang.
And even more frustration is coming from Seaford. William Verret says he got his power back Monday, so he turned off the generator he had on loan and his wife went grocery shopping. Then, they lost power again Thursday.
"We start to make our plans and live our lives based upon our service being restored, and we start to restore everything we lost and you just take it away again, sight unseen. It's poor management," says Verret.
PSEG LI says a customer can put in a claim if they feel they have sustained losses due to negligence on the part of the utility.
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