2nd Co-Op City Power Outage Affects Residents In Same Buildings That Lost Electricity Friday
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A power outage in Co-Op City on Sunday is impacting potentially thousands of residents in the same buildings that lost electricity Friday.
The latest outage was reported at around 3:30 a.m.
Co-Op City Police said work had begun to restore power to section one, Buildings 1-8, at around 8 a.m.
A resident was carried out of a cold and powerless apartment building and loaded into an ambulance, as several towers in the Bronx neighborhood again went dark Sunday morning, CBS2's Dave Carlin reported.
There was no power much of the day in Building 8.
"It's bad and Friday, too. Same thing. I work from home. I can't work. They can't do their schoolwork. It's terrible," tenant Rashida Thomas told Carlin.
During the outage on Friday, 73-year-old Ada Longmore died.
Family members said she was alone climbing flight after flight in Building 7 to get to her 19th floor unit, carrying an oxygen tank, which was found empty.
Longmore's daughter said her mother came here from the island of Jamaica less than 10 years ago and worked in health care.
In Building 7, the power eventually came back on and in the 19th floor stairwell police tape remains. There also remains many question, Carlin reported.
"Our hearts go out to this family and to this woman. She was our neighbor," said Linda Berk, Riverbay Corporation board president.
Power Failure update
— Co-Op City Police (@CCPDnyc) February 28, 2021
The power plant has restored full power to most of the buildings and partial power to others. Bldg 8 will soon be powered up by a generator. The Bldg 9 Association Rm is open for residents to warm up, get water, and charge their mobile devices.
At a news conference, Carlin asked politicians and leaders of the Riverbay Corporation, which runs the 35 buildings that make up the community, what went wrong.
"There could be several causes and we have to eliminate them one at a time," manager Robert Klehammer said. "Building 8, where there was the initial transformer fire, we've isolated that and we're hooking it up to a generator.
"It's taking six hours to hook the generator up," Klehammer added.
Power Failure Update: In order to reduce the possibility of a repeat outage, we are closing the laundry rooms and taking one elevator in each bank out of service in Bldgs 1-8. Residents in section one buildings and town houses are asked to reduce energy usage in their apartments.
— Co-Op City Police (@CCPDnyc) February 28, 2021
Co-Op City generates its own power supply and distributes it to residents. Two outages for eight buildings over three days has tenants feeling vulnerable.
"When it doesn't work we're on our own and we cannot get help from Con Ed and we're at a loss," one man said.
"Get to the bottom of what happened and that this doesn't happen again," tenant Shernette Brown added.
Longmore is survived by her husband and five adult children -- four daughters and a son.