Cuomo: Power Back In Manhattan For All Grids But One

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Power had been restored to the vast majority of Manhattan Saturday morning, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

"Downtown Manhattan has power restored – all except on network," Gov. Cuomo said Saturday morning. Altogether 60 percent of New York customers who lost power have seen it restored, and the total number of customers without power was under 900,000 Saturday morning, Cuomo said.

Cuomo said power companies needed to be sure to get power restored as quickly as possible.

"People are suffering. It's an issue of safety, and we want the utility companies doing everything they have to do," he said.

Con Edison said Friday night that it planned to restore power to all Manhattan customers by 8 a.m. Saturday.

Power began to return Friday afternoon to large sections of Manhattan south of 39th Street that had been in the dark since Monday night.

"It affected us in a big way. We lost a lot of merchandise. We had to give away a lot of ice cream to the public, and milk also, but we're happy the light is back," one bodega clerk told CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli. "I couldn't believe it. I thought the generator was the one that powered things back on. But we're happy to see the light come back."

People celebrated on blocks where residents had spent the past four nights in an eerie, urban darkness.

Con Edison said the lights went back on at around 5 p.m. Friday in about 65,000 homes, apartment buildings and businesses on the Lower East Side and in the East Village. Another 25,000 customers in Chelsea got power a short time later.

By Saturday morning, the West Village, Hudson Square and TriBeCa had also had power restored.

The utility said some outer-borough neighborhoods with overhead wires may not have power until Nov. 11.

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