Melting snow on heavily salted streets can create isolated service problems a few days after a major snowstorm. Salt and melting snow that gets into manholes can damage cable connections, sometimes resulting in manhole events involving smoke and/or fire.
On Christmas Eve, about 36,000 of Con Edison's customers lost service due to a rain and wind storm. In turn, crews and the largest contractor force the company has ever assembled in advance of a storm restored service to 91 percent of the customers with outages.
In addition, following the recent snowstorm, Con Edison's crews were prepared to deal with manhole events and isolated service interruptions. Con Edison had extra crews available to address manhole events and isolated service issues. During the post-storm periods, Con Edison advised its customers to keep pets away from lampposts, grates and utility hole covers.
The below infographic, which was posted on Twitter by Con Edison, shows the danger of manhole explosions and how winter weather can cause them.
