Hundreds of Brooklyn residents will have no power or heat through Monday morning as temperatures plunged into the single digits following a devastating outage that started late Saturday evening.
Roughly 1,500 Con Ed customers in Brooklyn were still without power Sunday afternoon as technicians scrambled to patch outage hotspots amid a record-shattering cold snap over the weekend.
The mercury dropped to 3 degrees in the city Sunday, with bitter wind chills dragging the real feel temperatures to 14 degrees below zero.
Bushwick felt the brunt of the outage, with an estimated 1,000 residents still impacted as of Sunday night, according to the Con Ed power outage grid.
Con Ed originally estimated power would be restored by 3 p.m. Sunday, but later pushed it to 7 a.m. Monday.
Residents with electric heat were forced to brave the bone-chilling temps by either bundling up at home or seeking refuge with relatives or at one of the city’s warming centers.
Camilla, a 35-year-old DJ who lives in Bushwick, lost her heating Sunday afternoon and retreated to a nearby warming center.
“I feel like we are in freaking Alaska. It’s extremely cold indoors,” she told The Post while bundled up in a puffer jacket.
Camilla’s two pet cats are with her for now as she rushes to find “emergency boarding for them.”
She said she plans to “wear all my clothes, put on all my layers” if she decides to sleep in her apartment Sunday night.
“It’s crazy. I just don’t understand how Con Ed is managing this situation, but I didn’t see any urgency,” she said.
“It’s a crazy situation. What if you don’t have friends or family around? What would you do?” she wondered.
Michael Murphy, a 60-year-old dad of two, said he’s shelling out $477 for two nights at a hotel after losing heat.
“We were going to stay with in-laws in Staten Island, but we thought, you know what, let’s make this enjoyable,” Murphy told The Post.
“It’s dark and cold. You feel the temperature slowly go down,” he described while warming up in his car.
Melissa Washington, a 35-year-old mom of four, told The Post that she’ll be taking her family to their in-laws’ home.
“I haven’t really experienced this since the blackout all those years ago,” Washington said, referring to the 2003 Big Apple blackout.
Washington also claimed that Con Ed “hasn’t really been communicating with the residents at all.”
“Now you have to watch the Super Bowl on a little phone like this,” she groused while squinting at her iPhone.
Con Ed said its technicians ran into problems caused by snow and road salt seeping into its ground equipment.
There are nearly 65 warming facilities open across the city this weekend, including dozens of warming buses, as subzero wind chills pushed temperatures well below freezing.
Forecasters estimated that the wind alone, which reached up to 50 mph gusts, can make it feel anywhere from minus 15 to minus 25.
“If you’re not well protected, if you’re out there for more than half an hour, you’re going to be in trouble with frostbite and hypothermia,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tom Kines warned.
The entire city was under a rare extreme cold warning through 1 p.m. Sunday. It is still under a severe weather advisory until 4 a.m. Monday.
At least 18 New Yorkers have diedoutside during nearly two weeks of unrelenting cold weather. Thirteen died of hypothermia, three were linked to overdoses, and two are still under investigation.
On Saturday morning, an 81-year-old man was found dead on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building. Officials are probing whether the freezing temps contributed to his death.
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