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Brian Lehrer: Now our call-in for people in the Tri-State area who lost power because of the tropical storm and had other impacts as well at (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280. An account this morning from PowerOutage.US says, "New Jersey still has roughly 550,000 people without power, New York has more than 567,000 without power, Connecticut has 620,000. Power is also out in parts of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

At its peak on Tuesday night, New Jersey was the hardest hit with more than 1.2 million customers in the state without service. That's about half the number of people who lost power during Sandy, and Connecticut has seen more power outages than Sandy by about 50,000." That's how big Isaias turned out to be in our area. The total in Connecticut was over 700,000 losing power at its peak.

Listeners give us a report. Is the power still out? We heard that it might be a few days yet until everything is restored, from New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy, who says to be patient, and also from the leaders in New York and Connecticut, and they're all saying we shouldn't have to be this patient, and they're all knocking the utility companies. Give us a report, folks. Help us report this story. Are you still without power and how are you coping? (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280. Also, with respect to trees and other kinds of destruction, tree injuries and deaths have been reported in large numbers.

First of all, a human death as a result of a falling tree, a 60-year-old man died when a tree fell on a car that he was riding in during the storm in Queens, about a half-hour later, a woman was critically injured by a falling tree branch in Brooklyn. By nine o'clock, the city had gotten nearly 15,000 calls about storm-related tree damage that night. Were you one of the callers to 311? Have you been seeing trees or other debris falling?

Have you lost even maybe a beloved tree or part of a beloved tree? Did you move your cars or your other belongings to a safe place in time? How are you staying safe from falling debris? Let's crowdsource the reporting on where we are now this long after Isaias left the area. (646) 435-7280, help us report this story. (646) 435-7280, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to our call-in for people in the Tri-State area who lost power or a beloved tree or anything else because of tropical storm Isaias, help us report the storm damage by calling and saying what happened to your home or on your block or in your neighborhood. (646) 435-7280, what's the situation right now? Let's start with Rita in New Canaan. Rita, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Rita: Hi. How are you?

Brian: Good. How are things?

Rita: Well, New Canaan, there are about 85% loss of power. We still don't have power. They're saying we won't get power until Monday. We're doing better than most because we have a generator, but there are a lot of people that don't have power and dealing with the heat and older people dealing with the COVID crisis, it's pretty dire. Then, in terms of work, we have no internet. New Canaan has offered people to go into the town hall and the library, but it's just challenging.

Brian: Could this have been avoided, in your opinion, or is it one of those things?

Rita: Well, I would say there's two things. One, I used to live in Southern California, our lines are buried. I think that's a long-term issue that it's a buried line. I'd say the second thing is the trees should have been trimmed. There are trees all over the line. That caused a lot of problems. I think there are things that could have been done that would have mitigated this somewhat.

Brian: Rita, thank you very much for checking in with us and an interesting perspective from a former Southern Californian. It's true in Manhattan as well, where there was less damage and less power out than a lot of other places. The power lines are underground. There certainly was talk, after Sandy and Hurricane Irene back then, of putting more power lines in more places underground, but of course, it's a long expensive process. Trent in Teaneck, you're on WNYC. Hi, Trent.

Trent: Hi.

Brian: I see your power is out.

Trent: Our power has been out since 11:45 on Tuesday, which was to be expected, but we're still out. I'm more frustrated in the fact that there's not a lot of communication with respect to just telling us what's going on. I haven't seen any movement more than 48 hours after the storm, to take up the trees or clean up the area. We're near a hospital. An entire street between two major thoroughfares and town is impassable. Yet, I've yet to see too much in the way of fixing this issue.

By the way, we moved into this area knowing that there was a heavy tree canopy in the area. I figured that, well, we'll just deal with it, but from a resilience standpoint, it doesn't appear that we're doing a very good job of keeping these things from happening. We lost power in the last weather event, and another [inaudible 00:06:35] along that same street. What happens beyond sending a crew whenever they get around to it, it doesn't appear that we're going to be able to keep this from happening in an environment where we'll probably get more and more stronger storms as we go on from here, 5, 10, 15 years down the road.

Brian: Yes, with warming. Trent, thank you very much. Ellen in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen. Do we have Ellen in Flatbush? Let's try Edwin in Queens. Edwin, you're on-- Oh, this might be my computer acting up. You know what we're going to do, Juliana, can we take a break? We have one more break to take during the show anyway, and we'll see if we can get these phone calls back up. I apologize for the technical glitch, folks. Even if we can't, we have some unbelievably big breaking news on a lawsuit being filed by Attorney General of New York, Tish James, that is just breaking. Whether we fix our phone box system or not, we're going to bring you that news right after this.

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