TOWN OF HAMBURG & EDEN, N.Y. (WKBW) — Hundreds of neighbors in the Southtowns were still without power Wednesday night, following Tuesday's brutal windstorm.
According to National Grid, thousands of utility workers have continued to fix downed lines and try to restore power to customers.
At the height of the storm, more than 51,000 National Grid customers lost power due to hurricane force winds.
As of Wednesday evening, the utility said more than half of those customers have had their service restored.
As for those still without electricity, a number of leaders in the Southtowns have sprung into action, opening warming shelters and distributing bottled water and dry ice.
7 News' Pheben Kassahun turned the mic over to those working to keep their community safe, including two warming shelter supervisors who are offering food and power supply, an employee in Eden's only grocery store, which just reopened today after getting electricity back.
Additionally, a dispatcher from the Town of Hamburg who said he will be working throughout the night.
The Hamburg Senior Community Center extending the hours and the Eden Town Hall opened its doors for people to warm up as they wait for power to be stored.
Town of Hamburg Youth Recreation and Senior Services director, Jillian Gorman-King said, "They can relax. We have a couple of televisions that we can turn on for them. We can charge their devices and get some water. Just somewhere they can be comfortable without power."
"We have coffee, hot tea, some magazines, we have food soup and chili that we can serve you and some crackers and chips," Town of Eden town supervisor Rich Ventry added.
If there are still issues and outages, the centers will be open on Thursday as well.
Ventry told Kassahun that only one person came to the warming center Wednesday night. The warming at the Eden Town Hall will reopen Thursday morning at 8 a.m.
Meanwhile, a lot of restoration efforts were in place to restore power to National Grid and NYSEG customers, in the Town of Hamburg.
Town of Hamburg emergency manager, Sean Crotty explained, "This has been difficult because without power and the power companies are responsible for notifications. We work with them to develop their strategies and their plans to restore power but we don't have a say in it. So while people are frustrated they may not be getting the estimated time of restoration, we sympathize with that but we're trying to do what we can to work with them. Not only the utilities but also the residents. That's why we opened up the warming centers."
On the bright side, the Town of Eden's only grocery store received its lights Wednesday around 4:30 p.m., after it was lights out the night before.
"Everything shut down. We had ten minutes left to get out on the register and then the register," Eden Shur Fine store closer, Ed Thatcher said. "We were lucky and it's still on. People were coming and going to get gas, diesel."
