VESTAL, NY (WSKG) - Power’s been restored to many of the Southern Tier residents who lost it on Sunday. Thunderstorms with strong winds and heavy rainfall swept through the region
NYSEG estimates fewer than 750 people were without power as of Monday afternoon. This comes after about 19,000 people lost power. Outages stretched from Elmira to Oneonta.
In the Binghamton-area, where there were dozens of downed power line, there were over 6,000 outages.
“So we went into make-safe mode right off the bat and it took a significant number of hours just to make safe before we could begin restoration,” said George Potter, New York State Area Commander for NYSEG.
Storms were expected throughout the day, but were worse than what NYSEG expected. “The hardest hit area for us was in the Candor area," said Potter. "We started seeing some significant outages from Elmira, moved into Binghamton and then unfortunately hit our Liberty and Oneonta divisions as well. Right along the New York-Pennsylvania border.”
Potter hopes to have those customers restored tonight. The National Weather Service in Binghamton is warning of more thunderstorms beginning on Wednesday.