The Long Island Power Authority believes it will hit its goal for power restoration Friday.
"We continue to expect that 90 percent of all outages will be restored by the end of the day, with the majority or 99 percent to be restored sometime Sunday," LIPA chief Michael Hervey said at a morning news conference.
The utility said that as of Friday morning, it had restored over 445,000 outages. But that still left 78,000 Long Island customers without electricity.
LIPA is also worried that Mother Nature may add to its problems over the weekend.
"We are somewhat concerned about the weather forecast Sunday, which calls for thunderstorms," Hervey said. "We will work through those storms as safely as we can, but those storms may well add additional outages."
LIPA said it will work through the weekend and Hervey said that "our entire workforce will be available."
But the staffing for the weekend will depend on the size of the job.
"Staffing levels will remain the same to the extent that at some point we decide to rampdown because we're finished," Hervey said, adding, "we would hope that would be over the weekend."
The LIPA chief did say some of the tougher jobs will be the final ones.
"We've addressed many of the larger outages, and now we're addressing the smaller more complex outages."
Hervey and John Bruckner, National Grid's President of Long Island Transmission and Distribution, said they couldn't say how much overtime they will pay over the holiday weekend since they're dealing with many different employment contracts for the restoration jobs.
Bruckner said that they're getting addtional help on Friday from National Grid workers who have finished power restoration upstate.
In total, there are 7,500 workers on the job as of Friday, according to Bruckner.
While Hervey said the power restoration has been proceeding along as quickly as they said it would, he once again said he understood the frustration of those still in the dark.
"It's been a difficult, difficult week for many of our customers. Many having power out much longer than anticipated," Hervey said. "I certainly want our customers to know that we have put every last resource available that we can use into power restoration."
