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Roughly 67 percent – 2,000 out of 2,964 – of all Con Edison customers in Briarcliff Manor were without power during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, according to Con Edison reports. More than eight trees fell on houses and dozens more took out power lines and closed roads, said Briarcliff Manor Fire Chief Mike King previously. Briarcliff Manor Public Works crews spent weeks cleaning up the fallen trees and repairing roads and Village Manager Phil Zegarelli said the costs to the village "could be great."
“With all of the work that had to be done, we’re significantly over a quarter of a million dollars now,” Zegarelli said Wednesday. “We don’t have all of the numbers yet but a lot of it is the overtime to our public works employees for all of the cleanup they did.”
Zegarelli said the village will apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for reimbursement of “most of those costs” at a later date. It took roughly 60 to 80 days for FEMA to respond to fund requests following Hurricane Irene, he said.
“We’ve documented everything and we’ll be applying for funds as soon as they become available,” he said. “On Irene, we received the funds from FEMA pretty quick but the amount from the state hasn’t been fully sent to us yet. So this is a very slow process.”
Con Edison officials said Tuesday that the company is working to make permanent repairs to Briarcliff Manor, which means much shorter and smaller outages in the next few weeks. Zegarelli said village officials are set to meet with Con Edison next week to discuss what occurred in the village during Hurricane Sandy.
“They’re going to sit down with us to figure out the good, the bad and the ugly of what happened and how better to respond,” he said. “They’re meeting with all of the municipalities and our turn is next week.”
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