Emergency declaration rescinded; most of Island gets back power

Supervisor Jim Dougherty on Thursday ended the state of emergency he declared on Saturday as Hurricane Irene approached. In his announcement, he said the town had “cleared the public roadways and electric service has been restored to the bulk of residents” and that the town “and LIPA are working and will continue to work diligently 24 hours a day to bring power restoration back to 100 percent of all residents.”

LIPA’s outage map on Friday morning indicated that power had been restored to 65 percent of customers Island wide. The map, which has contained glaring inaccuracies — on Monday it listed 24 customers on Shelter Island without power for a time when there must have many hundreds — showed the following breakdowns:

• 392 out of 1307 customers still without power  in what LIPA labels “Shelter Island,” approximately the southern half of the Island; that means 79 percent of those customers have power.

• 308 out of 1725 still without power in what LIPA labels “Shelter Island Heights,” the northern half of the Island, or 64 percent with power restored.

• 12 out of 43 customers still without power in Dering Harbor, or 52 percent with power restored.

In his announcement, the supervisor said the town’s emergency operations center remained open on a 24-hour basis and that residents with special needs could call 749-0600 of 911 if they had a medical emergency.

The town will continue to accept brush and logs from the Irene clean-up free of charge at the Recycling Center through 6 p.m. on Sunday, September 11.