by Gina Greco
National Grid reported on Thursday, November 12 that despite a downsizing of its crew from four to two at its Old Forge service center, in Thendara, service and emergency response capabilities will not be diminished.
This is according to Virginia Limmiatis of The National Grid Media Relations Department of Central New York.
“What we are doing is basically providing, what we would say, is a significant increase of hours. We will be covering the area up to six days a week and seventeen hours a day,” she said.
“That is a significant increase from the current eight hours a day, five days a week.”
“We would hate for our customers to think we are short changing them. What we are doing is expanding those coverage hours. We are not in any way planning on closing the facility,” she said.
Limmiatis said the company will be pre-staging crews for quicker assistance.
“We pre-stage crews when we know there is an event that needs attention–that is a typical day at National Grid–anticipating the needs of our customers and looking at our crew availability and our dispatching crews as needed,” she said.
She also stated that the workers will not be traveling further to assist the area in the time of a non-emergency outage.
The response time will remain the same, she clarified.
National Grid has not downsized their services in New York. They continue to hire and have increased slightly over the past couple years.
Limmiatis there is no downside to the change.
“It should be seamless,” she concluded.
