Customers are people, too

"In New Jersey, more than a half a million customers were without power on Sunday, and the state’s largest utility, the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, estimated that it could take as long as a week to restore electricity to all its customers. Connecticut Light & Power said 267,000 customers had lost power.

"In New York, nearly 400,000 customers were without electricity on Sunday, according to the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. That included 271,000 customers who get their power from the Long Island Power Authority, and 74,000 customers of Consolidated Edison. Many of those outages were in Queens, where 21,700 customers were without power, and on Staten Island, where customers people had lost electricity."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/nyregion/wind-and-rain-from-hurricane-irene-lash-new-york.html