Electric Street Peril

[Kris]

January 22, 2004

In Risky City, New Reason to Watch Your Step

By IAN URBINA

As if falling debris, unstable scaffolding and suspicious packages were not enough, New Yorkers now have something else to worry about: that the ubiquitous plates covering holes on streets and sidewalks around the city might just be electrified.

Six days after the death of Jodie S. Lane, the woman killed when she stepped on an electrified metal plate while walking her two dogs in the East Village, answers are few and questions remain as tangled as the millions of wires running under the city's streets.

On Tuesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg criticized Consolidated Edison for the death, adding to recent finger-pointing between city officials and the utility. "It's just unacceptable that somebody can walk down the street and get electrocuted," the mayor said, dismissing Con Ed's explanation that the wires under the plate were probably corroded by street salt.

"We have salt on the road every winter," the mayor said while visiting the firehouse of Engine 282/Ladder 148 in Borough Park, Brooklyn. "We've got to make sure that doesn't happen again."

Chris Olert, a spokesman for Con Ed, said the company was investigating the electrocution, and had inspected more than 620 manholes and utility boxes since Saturday. But he added that with 90,000 miles of cable and more than 250,000 manholes and utility boxes in the New York area, it is impossible to completely eliminate such problems.

Mr. Olert said Con Ed had monitoring stations for power surges in every borough, but such stations would not have alerted the utility to the type of threat - a corroded, frayed wire - that electrified the plate Ms. Lane stepped on.

The density of the pipes, subway tunnels and gas lines that crowd the space beneath the city streets limits Con Ed's ability to lay the electric wires any deeper than they already are, Mr. Olert said. He noted, however, that Con Ed runs electrical wires where the city says it can.

In 2002, the company began using wires with thicker insulation, which have a greater resistance to corrosion. But Mr. Olert said that only about 928 miles of the total wiring under the city's streets had that type of insulation.

Whatever the potential for a repeat accident, New Yorkers are concerned. Calls to 311 about potential live wires have increased since Ms. Lane's death last Friday, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor.

One such caller, Michael Zorek, 43, of the Upper West Side, said he contacted the city hot line on Sunday around midnight after noticing that his dog, Scooter, frantically darted past a section of sidewalk on West 86th Street near the corner of Columbus and Amsterdam.

Other neighborhood dog owners witnessed similarly erratic behavior from their pets at the same spot, he said. The next morning around 10:30 a.m., a Con Ed truck was parked at the location and the repairman explained that there indeed had been an underground short-circuit, Mr. Zorek said. "Actually, I was impressed with Con Ed's response time," Mr. Zorek said. "Then again, I have a 22-month-old son who falls down a lot, so I shudder to think what could have happened."

Mr. Bloomberg has also faced tough questions about the incident. While visiting the Eileen Dugan Senior Citizen Center in Brooklyn, he was confronted by Celia Maniero Cacace, 68, who said that in the last two years she had repeatedly complained to Con Ed about live wires in her neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

"Salt corrodes wires, this is not some new revelation," she said.

Tom Cocola, spokesman for the New York City Department of Transportation, the agency ultimately in charge of street safety, said that the department's chief engineer is waiting for the results from Con Ed's investigation.

The department has a special highway quality assurance group with 108 workers responsible for inspecting sites whenever new cables or wires are laid, Mr. Cocola said. But this group, he explained, oversees ground-breaking, not the upkeep of old and already-installed lines.

Still unclear is what can or will be done to prevent the kind of accident that killed Ms. Lane last week.

"There have to be some steps to take," said Dr. Barry A. Farber, Ms. Lane's research adviser at Columbia University Teachers College, where Ms. Lane was a doctoral student in clinical psychology.

Ms. Lane, 30, was soon to complete a book for children who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, Dr. Farber said.

Christine Fernandez, 35, a close friend and classmate of Ms. Lane, said she was appalled at Con Ed's handling of the problem. "I know it's a huge job, but they should not wait for an accident to respond," she said.

In a statement through a friend, Ms. Lane's family said that they would not comment on the questions raised by the accident, but they said that she loved New York City, where she lived for the last 10 years.

"She called it 'the city,' " the statement said, "as though there was none other on the globe."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 1, 2004

NEW YORK OBSERVED

Wild Masonry, Murderous Metal and Mr. Blonde

By JEROME CHARYN

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/02/01/nyregion/randam.184.jpg
Improper insulation, Consolidated Edison says, turned this metal sidewalk plate into a weird kind of electric chair. Then suddenly, a young woman was dead.

I wasn't in Manhattan when Jodie S. Lane was electrocuted two weeks ago while walking her two dogs. I couldn't participate in the anger and bewilderment of most New Yorkers. I'd just returned to Paris. I was locked in a classroom with a bunch of movie mavens, talking about Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), the psychopathic killer in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 film, "Reservoir Dogs," a devil who dances around the cop he's just captured, cuts off his ear and douses him with gasoline.

There was something so malevolent about Mr. Blonde and his little dance that it felt like a random act outside the dynamic of cinema itself. The cop is played by an actor who seems part of some elemental universe where nothing and no one has a name - the gods are against this poor policeman, whose fate it was to bump against Mr. Blonde.

There was no Mr. Blonde in Ms. Lane's mysterious death on Jan. 16, but there might have been. "Reservoir Dogs'' is a tale of L.A., where nobody walks, where sidewalks are hard to find. Ms. Lane would probably have gotten a traffic ticket before she ever crossed a street. But New York is a nation of walkers. And before she was electrocuted outside Veniero's pastry shop in the East Village (with the best marzipan on the planet), she chatted with another dog owner about their dogs.

She and her dogs had wandered near a metal plate covering an underground utility box; improper insulation, according to Consolidated Edison, had turned that metal cover into a weird kind of electric chair. One of the dogs stepped on the cover, went berserk, bit the nose of the other dog. Ms. Lane tried to calm them, but she touched the wrong dog, and an electrical current went through the dog like a murderous conductor and into her.

"It's just unacceptable that somebody can walk down the street and get electrocuted," Mayor Bloomberg said soon after the accident. But how can anyone patrol 90,000 miles of cable, with 250,000 manholes and utility boxes? In 1999 a carriage horse was electrocuted when it stepped on a Con Ed cover near Park Avenue. Who can say how many other horses fell, or how many children were electrocuted for burrowing in the wrong hole, or being in the wrong place?

And it isn't only bad wiring. In 1979 a Barnard student, Grace Gold, was killed by a piece of masonry that dropped like a bomb from an eighth-story window on West 115th Street. "This is like a 10-million-to-1 possibility - no, more than that," said a detective on the scene, as if 10 million to 1 were improbable odds for New Yorkers, who have to dodge 10 million possibilities every day.

We can't do much about the labyrinth that lives under the ground - not just wires but pipes, subway tunnels and gas lines. It is a subterranean country that seems to mock each of our moves, mimic our own complexity, as if we were expendable, not the wires. There are abandoned subway stations that belong to another era, stations that would bother our dreams if we ever decided to examine them. It's better that they're lost in their own stop-time.

But Ms. Lane belonged to us. She wasn't some wild creature that rose up from the ground. She was a 30-year-old doctoral student at Columbia University Teachers College, and she was writing a book about children with obsessive compulsive disorder.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence, she'd lived in New York for the last 10 years. She was of the city, as much as any single one of us. But we seem to have more vivid information about the dogs than Jodie herself. One of them lost a couple of nails on its back paws. The dogs were brought to nearby St. Marks Veterinary Hospital.

"They were mostly shaken up," said the veterinarian who administered to them. "They just saw what happened to their mother and were terrified."

That word "mother" startled me, as if we lived in a veterinarian's world, where dogs could adopt us as part of their kingdom. Ms. Lane had touched a nerve in New York. We're still raw after 9/11. Her crazy disappearance reminds us how fragile we all are in a town that was attacked by a diabolic killer-poet, Osama bin Laden, a Mr. Blonde who hides behind a holy war. We're a city that can't quite recover from a carnage that makes no sense.

WE are the most welcoming, various people in the world. Over half of us are foreign-born. I grew up during one colossal wave of immigrants, when Italians from Sicily, Jews from Eastern Europe, and their children strode through our public schools and learned New York's powerful song: none of us was alone; we would give back to each new generation what had been given to us. Rather than a melting pot, we were pieces of a mosaic. That was our strength. Unlike bin Laden, who would narrow us down to some rigid formula where foreigners couldn't find a place, we are all foreigners who look one another in the eye.

I remember as a small boy in the Bronx watching Joe DiMaggio, the son of Italian immigrants, striding along the Grand Concourse in his Yankee uniform, absorbed in himself but still curious enough to smile at us and tip his hat. No one would have interfered with this Yankee Clipper who'd been lent to the Bronx for a little while. "Clipper's coming," we would whisper, and it gave us an edge over Manhattan. Manhattan had the Chrysler Building, but we had the Clipper. . . .

And now, after 9/11, our own history seems in danger. The mosaic may not hold. I doubt that another DiMaggio will ever walk the Concourse in his cleats. And who knows what mad bomber might rip away the witch's silver cap that sits on top of Chrysler? We remain a city in mourning, no matter what memorial we fasten onto the site of the twin towers.

I'm privileged enough to have an apartment in Greenwich Village; Tony Soprano (a k a James Gandolfini) is my neighbor. I see him wander in his bomber jacket, clutching a baby carriage.

Why does Soprano comfort me? Is he a good Mr. Blonde, a devil who has his own harried family, who kisses as often as he kills? In my corner of Manhattan he's not a Mafia don, just a papa who haunts West 12th Street.

I miss New York when I'm away. Paris is a city of monuments and streets with buildings that are so symmetrical, they look like stranded ocean liners. But I cannot find that great, brooding mix of faces, that sense of a constant carnival.

Ms. Lane was part of this carnival, a young woman who wrote about disturbed children, walked her dogs near Veniero's, and encountered the wrong electrical grid. Any one of us might have stood under a piece of wild masonry that dropped from the sky, or a crane that happened to fall, or bumped into a taxicab that caromed out of control - a kind of random malevolence, as if the metropolis were populated with a world of Mr. Blondes, cruel puppeteers who picked on us, at the odds of 10 million to 1. And each of us, as New Yorkers, might remember Ms. Lane, even mourn for her, while we dance out of the devil's way.

Jerome Charyn, who runs the film studies program at the American University of Paris, is the author, most recently, of "Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway'' (Four Walls Eight Windows).

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 2, 2004

On City Streets, a New Hazard

New Yorkers are familiar with a kind of true urban legend — stories of freak fatal occurrences like falling bits of skyscraper facades and taxis that suddenly come careering through restaurant walls and run over diners. Last month they added another story to the list. An exposed wire under a metal plate electrocuted a woman as she walked her dogs in the East Village. City residents may be fatalistic, but in the aftermath of this kind of tragedy they rightfully expect a response that addresses not only the immediate problem, but also the wider systematic failure that allowed it to happen.

As it admitted responsibility for the accident, Consolidated Edison announced that it was stepping up its inspections of the city's 250,000 manholes and utility boxes. Still, pedestrians should be excused if they spend more time than usual peering down at the road before them.

Since the Jan. 16 death of Jodie Lane, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Columbia University Teachers College, Con Edison says it has diverted workers from other duties and brought in contractors to allow a complete inspection of the underground system and sidewalk boxes in one month's time. So far, of the 3,000 sites inspected, about 15 were giving off voltage and required repair. At that rate, there could be more than 1,000 problems found.

Ms. Lane had the misfortune of falling on the cover of a utility box electrified with 57 volts from an exposed wire. A wire typically is wrapped in adhesive rubber tape and then plastic is placed around that. The wire in question was missing the rubber layer and had been for about a year. Inspections had been on a schedule that could sometimes allow a site to go unchecked for years. Con Edison needs to convince the public not only that it has eliminated current hazards, but that it has improved its inspection methods so that nothing like this can ever happen again.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 4, 2004

Reforms Are Urged for Con Ed After Woman's Electrocution

By IAN URBINA and SABRINA TAVERNISE

Consolidated Edison said yesterday that it had corrected 110 cases of stray voltage and inspected about half the manhole and service box covers in New York City, following a woman's electrocution last month.

The company, meanwhile, came under increased pressure to change its policies. City Council Speaker Gifford Miller joined labor leaders, community advocates and other council members in calling on Con Ed to overhaul its inspection, repair and maintenance policies. The woman, Jodie S. Lane, 30, died after stepping on an electrified metal plate while walking her dogs in the East Village on Jan. 16.

"Our job at the City Council is to hold people accountable, and we intend to do just that," Mr. Miller said yesterday. He said that the Council's Transportation Committee would conduct a public hearing on Feb. 12 to further investigate the utility's practices and propose methods for preventing a repeat of the accident.

As he spoke, Mr. Miller waved photographs from around the city showing corroded wires dangling from light poles and service boxes exposed to the elements. "I'm no electrician," he said, "but these certainly don't look up to snuff."

Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, from Astoria, Queens, said he was introducing legislation requiring Con Ed to conduct annual inspections of service box and manhole covers, and to report its findings publicly.

During the news conference, two Con Ed representatives distributed a news release saying that the utility had already inspected more than 120,000 of the 250,000 manhole and service box covers in the city. The release also said that Con Ed shared responsibility with the Department of Transportation for electric service to city light poles, of which the utility said it had inspected 100,000 and found 157 with errant voltage.

But several speakers criticized the utility for what they said was a tendency toward hasty patchwork rather than careful solutions.

Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., from Astoria, said that a few months ago, a Con Ed transformer across the street from his office blew out and was fixed with a temporary structure called a shunt, only to explode last week, setting an adjacent building and a vehicle on fire.

One of the more unusual suggestions came from Sally Haddock, a veterinarian at St. Mark's Veterinary Hospital, where Ms. Lane's dogs had been treated. Ms. Haddock said that dogs could serve as an early-warning system - the urban equivalent of canaries in a coal mine.

She said that during her 17 years as a veterinarian in the city, countless clients had complained to her about their dogs getting shocked, but she had doubted the claims.

She added, "I doubt no longer."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 6, 2004

After a Death, Con Ed Tests Show High-Voltage Dangers Lurking

By IAN URBINA

It's a map of hidden danger.

Three weeks after Jodie S. Lane was killed by an electrified metal plate while walking her dogs in the East Village, Consolidated Edison as of yesterday had found more than 280 service-box lids, manhole covers and lampposts around the five boroughs and Westchester County with stray current passing through them. The amount of voltage in each, the utility said, ranged from the single digits - which would produce a mild shock - to 140 at a lamppost in Bayside, Queens, which could be fatal.

The electrified spots were discovered during emergency inspections prompted by Ms. Lane's death. Con Ed said that all the trouble spots were repaired as soon as they were discovered, and marked with red spray paint. The inspections are expected to be completed by the end of the month, a Con Ed spokesman, Chris Olert, said. In all, 550,000 sites will be checked.

A map created by The New York Times shows that the so-called hot spots were found in fairly equal numbers around Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, with only one on Staten Island and two in Westchester. It also shows that potentially deadly steel service-box lids, manhole covers and lampposts existed for unknown lengths of time at some of the city's busiest intersections, just inches from thousands of daily passers-by.

Random visits late Wednesday to several lampposts on Con Ed's list revealed that at least two of them - both at 46th Street and Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, Queens - still had electrical current passing through them. The stray-voltage device used by The Times was the same pen-shaped tool used by Con Ed, and while it does not measure the exact voltage, it gives off a stronger red light if a high amount of stray electricity is found. At the two Queens Boulevard sites, 10 feet apart, the device became bright red when held several inches away from the lampposts.

One of the lampposts stands in a busy area in front of the entrance to a Food Dynasty store, where bikes were locked up and children were lounging. At the adjacent bus stop, Jose Ontario, 32, of Jackson Heights, said he was glad that it was his habit to stay in the bus shelter rather than lean on that pole.

On the base of the other charged lamp, in a hole that should have been covered by a metal panel, was a mix of candy wrappers, empty cans, slush and a tangle of taped wires. Both lampposts were immediately brought to the attention of Con Edison. Experts said the entire casing of a lamppost could be electrified when the insulation around the wires carrying current to the light became corroded as and touched the casing.

Mr. Olert said that the utility corrected stray voltage problems at that location six days ago and that he was not sure why there might be stray voltage still flowing. He said that Con Ed was working with the city to correct the problem. The Department of Transportation said last night that the lampposts on the Con Ed list were across the street from those checked by The Times, and that repair crews were on the scene.

Councilman John C. Liu, chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee, which is to hold a public hearing Thursday on Con Ed's safety and maintenance record, said, "That it takes Con Ed repeated tries to get these problems solved makes it obvious that the city's aging electrical infrastructure is in dire need of attention."

Officials with the Fire Department and Con Ed said they were unaware of any injuries in connection with the lampposts cited on the Con Ed list. But William M. Mazer, a retired professor of electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, said the faulty lampposts presented a very real danger of shock to passers-by on wet sidewalks.

Sally Haddock, a veterinarian at St. Mark's Veterinary Hospital, said that many clients had told of dogs being shocked by electrified lampposts. Dogs are especially vulnerable, she said, because their paws are exposed, whereas people are protected by their shoes, which ground them.

The trouble spots listed by the utility were the result of two surveys, one for lampposts and one for service-box and manhole covers.

Though Con Ed was initially reluctant to release a list, the Department of Transportation, which shares responsibility for streetlights, provided a lamppost list on Wednesday. Con Ed followed yesterday with a list of manhole and service-box covers. The lamppost list was up to date as of Tuesday, the manhole and service box list as of yesterday.

The highest voltage found was 140 at a lamppost at 53rd Avenue and Oceania Street in Bayside, Queens. A block from Times Square, on 43rd Street off Eighth Avenue - among the city's busiest areas - Con Ed found and corrected a street lamp with 110 stray volts. Any voltage above 50 can be fatal.

One electrified lamppost was found on Staten Island, and no faulty manhole or service-box covers.

Manhattan had 53 electrified manholes and service-box covers, and 30 charged lampposts. The Bronx had 6 electrified manhole and service-box covers and 25 charged lampposts. In Brooklyn, 25 manhole and service-box locations and 38 streetlights were cited, and in Queens, 34 faulty lampposts and 24 manholes and service boxes. For Westchester County, Con Ed said, there were only 2 electrified service-box and manhole covers found and no faulty lampposts.

Jim Long, a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department, said that manhole problems ranged from simple smoke seepage to explosions shooting manhole covers several stories into the air. He said that most years, manhole problems numbered fewer than 2,500. In 2003, there were more than 4,500.

Electrified Lamp Posts and Plates in New York (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20040206_met_coned.xls)

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 10, 2004

City Takes Over Stray-Voltage Inspections

By IAN URBINA

Consolidated Edison said that it would finish checking for stray voltage at all manhole and service-box covers by the end of yesterday, but that it had inspected about half the city's lamp poles, and had handed over responsibility to the city to check the nearly 200,000 that remain.

The inspections began after the death of Jodie S. Lane, 30, who was electrocuted on Jan. 16 when she stepped on a charged metal plate while walking her dogs in the East Village.

Tom Cocola, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, said that the city began picking up the leftover workload on Saturday, but he could not set a date for completion. The city will start by checking the roughly 70,000 lamps in areas with the highest foot traffic, and then inspect the more than 120,000 other locations that pose less risk because their lamps are mounted on wooden poles, high overpasses, or on highways where foot traffic is minimal.

Con Ed and the city share the job of keeping the streets lighted, and of inspecting the lights for stray voltage. While the utility monitors all underground electrical wiring, its responsibility stops at the top of the rectangular box at the base of the poles, said Joe Petta, a Con Ed spokesman. The city's responsibility runs from base to bulb, Mr. Petta said. But since stray voltage often starts underground, sending errant voltage all the way up the side of the light pole,he said it was a problem that "crosses jurisdiction."

Con Ed said that as of yesterday, it had inspected 164,000 lamp poles out of the more than 350,000 in the city, finding that 257 had errant voltage. The utility said it also checked almost all of the 250,000 service-box lids and manhole covers, discovering 120 were electrified. The voltage ranged from single digits to 140.

"Really, it's no small accomplishment that we've gotten so much done so fast," Mr. Petta said, citing the more than a thousand workers who have remained in the field working to correct problems. The Department of Transportation said that it has put more than 100 inspectors on the streets, hoping to finish checking the highest-risk locations this week.

But for some, inspections are just the first step in dealing with the threat of stray voltage.

City Council members and union representatives have emphasized the need for the utility to find better ways to maintain its wiring.

"Finding these hot spots is only good if you prescribe a lasting solution," said Councilman John C. Liu, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, which is holding a public hearing on Thursday to get comments on how Con Ed can improve. Manny Hellen, president of Local 1-2 Utility Workers Union of America, said the best solution was legislation to mandate a tighter timetable for maintenance of its electrical grid. "Other cities with bad weather deal with corroding wires by having workers do regular overhauls on the electrical infrastructure," he said. "New York City needs to head in that direction if we're going to avoid another fatality," he said.

Some residents of the East Village are also mobilizing around the issue.

"Inspections are only useful if they make their findings public," said Gunnar Hellekson, 28, a computer technician who helped start the Jodie Lane Project. The group started a Web site last week that will map the locations of electrical hazards.

"They should be ashamed that we are doing their job for them," Mr. Hellekson said.

The Web site, firstrunfriends.org /coned, updated several times daily, provides a description and a color-coded alert system indicating the level and type of threat found.

The group will lead a march tomorrow at 4 p.m. in memory of Ms. Lane, beginning at the Tompkins Square Park dog run, proceeding past the site of her accident, on East 11th Street near First Avenue, and ending at Con Ed's headquarters at 14th and Irving Place.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

February 12, 2004

After a Death, Con Ed Is Pressed on Safety

By IAN URBINA

Pressure to maintain safe transmission facilities mounted on Consolidated Edison from all sides yesterday - from state regulators to a crowd of protesters who gathered with their dogs outside the utility's front door.

The Public Service Commission, the state regulatory body that oversees the utility, said yesterday that Con Ed had 30 days to prove that it did not break the law in connection with the death of Jodie S. Lane. She was electrocuted on Jan. 16 when she stepped on the metal cover of a utility box while walking her dogs in the East Village.

If the utility does not explain itself, the commission says it will sue Con Ed to obtain $250,000 in penalties per violation, or $37.5 million if violations are continuing.

The commission also set a strict timetable for other tasks. By March 19, the utility must finish testing all possible sources of stray voltage and by April 19, Con Ed must submit a comprehensive plan for dealing with the problem of stray voltage.

At the same time, Con Ed faced an angry crowd of almost 100 protesters, some with their dogs draped in sandwich boards. They marched to the company's headquarters at 10 Irving Place yesterday afternoon for a rally with union representatives and city officials.

"Their negligence is criminal and has been for years," Councilwoman Margarita López, who represents the Lower East Side, yelled into a megaphone as she gestured at the company's front door. "We have to ensure that when the attention shifts, the problem is corrected once and for all."

Ms. López pressed the case for yearly checks on all Con Ed equipment, with the results provided to the City Council.

Starting at Tompkins Square, the protesters carried signs reading "I Want to Feel Safe" and "I Remember Jodie Lane" as they wound their way to 11th Street near First Avenue, where they stopped to place a wreath at the site of Ms. Lane's death.

The group - a diverse gathering that included Jimmy, a Con Ed worker, and Bitsy Stephens, a 34-year old art therapist, carrying her 3-year-old Shih Tzu - bowed their heads in silence.

The march was organized by the Jodie Lane Project, a coalition of community groups whose Web site maps electrical hazards throughout the city as they are reported by citizens.

"Con Ed is not going to make us go away," said Gunnar Hellekson, one of the protest organizers.

In response, Con Ed issued a statement that said: "We will continue to fully cooperate with the Public Service Commission. We are implementing short- and long-term preventative programs to further minimize the risk of a tragedy like this ever happening again."

The company reiterated its condolences for Ms. Lane's death and pointed out that it had already finished checking all its 250,000 service box and manhole covers.

The Council will hold a public hearing today to allow the public to testify about Con Ed's performance and to pressure the utility into communicating better about potential hazards.

Utility representatives will meet with state lawmakers and union officials in Albany tomorrow over accusations of slackened inspection policies and ignored warnings of dangers before Ms. Lane's death.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Shocking Con Ed Revelations

By Curtis L. Taylor
Staff Writer

February 12, 2004, 10:19 PM EST

Con Edison did not report hundreds of electric shock complaints from the public to the state regulatory agency responsible for policing the utility, according to testimony at a City Council oversight hearing Thursday into the Jan. 16 death of a woman who walked on an electrified street plate.

Despite receiving 539 complaints during the past five years, the giant utility serving New York City and Westchester only reported 15 of them, — about three a year — to the state's powerful Public Service Commission, PSC Commissioner Thomas Dunleavy told the Transportation Committee.

But Kevin Burke, president and chief operating officer of Con Edison, said the utility was in compliance with state regulations in reporting substantiated injury complaints. He dismissed the discrepancy, saying the utility was now reporting all complaints to the state.

"We report any injury to the public and damage to property to the public service commission," Burke said. "If we go out and find there is no voltage condition, that is not required to be reported ... and if we do find the voltage but there is no injury, now we are reporting that. In the past that was not a requirement; that might explain some of the different numbers."

However, Manny Hellen, president of Local 102, Utility Workers Union of America, told the committee that the company was not being forthcoming about its safety practices. Hellen said there was an unwritten policy to pay fines and settle lawsuits rather than to maintain, repair and inspect systems.

"The public can no longer trust Con Edison to police itself. We need city and state legislation that will police the company," said Hellen, calling for tougher city and state regulations.

Dunleavy, one of five PSC commissioners, said the agency learned of the complaints just weeks ago. The PSC evaluates rate-hike requests from the utility.

The revelation comes as Con Edison faces potentially millions of dollars in fines from the PSC for a electrified street plate that killed Jodie Lane on East 11th Street. Con Edison has accepted responsibility for her death, saying it was caused by employee error.

Con Edison has 30 days to prove it did not break the law when it failed to properly repair the plate, or face heavy fines.

Under the city Charter, the Department of Transportation is responsible for construction and maintenance of electricity for the city.

But DOT officials testified that they relied on the state's Public Service Commission to police the utility.

"I am amazed ... that we have dangerous conditions of electrical voltage, manholes that blow up and carbon monoxide poisoning and the city does no inspections because they rely on the state. The state ... testifies that they don't do any inspections because they rely on Con Ed, which is like allowing the fox to watch the hen house," said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria).

Transportation Committee Chairman John Liu said: "It is stunning to hear repeated testimony that no one is accountable for protecting New Yorkers against the dangers posed by the city's electrical infrastructure."

Vallone and Liu said they would send a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg asking him to investigate why the city doesn't have a checks and balances system in place to inspect manhole covers.

Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor, said: "We will review the council's proposal and continue to work with Con Edison in every way possible to help them improve public safety."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

[Kris]

March 13, 2004

Con Ed Cites Record in Electrocution Report

Consolidated Edison should not be sued by the state regulatory agency because it was in full compliance with state safety regulations when an East Village woman was electrocuted on Jan. 16, a report filed yesterday by Con Edison said.

The regulatory agency, the Public Service Commission, required on Feb. 11 that Con Ed file a report within 30 days defending its safety procedures or else face fines of $250,000 per safety violation, or $37.5 million if violations are continuing.

Con Ed said that its safety procedures and training of workers were above industry standards and that Ms. Lane's death was the result of "ordinary negligence by a well-qualified and experienced worker with a reputation for safe work." Soon after the accident, Con Ed found that the stray voltage that killed Ms. Lane was caused by a wire a worker had improperly insulated.

The report said there had been no prior complaints at the service box where Ms. Lane was killed. Con Ed also said that it acted in good faith after the accident by immediately disclosing its mistakes and publicly accepting responsibility. It described the extent of its corrective actions, citing the more than 1,000 employees and contractors who were deployed 24 hours a day until stray voltage testing was completed on March 5.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

March 17, 2004

East Village Manhole Fire Causes Electrical Explosion

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

A fire in an East Village manhole spread to a nearby building last night, causing an explosion that injured a firefighter and forced residents of several buildings outdoors.

Firefighters received a call reporting a fire in a manhole outside the building at 183 Avenue B about 8:30 last night, according to William Green, a Fire Department spokesman. The flames spread to an electrical box in the basement of the building, and caused an explosion.

One firefighter was knocked to the ground, and was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Firefighter Green said.

Councilwoman Margarita López, who lives around the corner from the accident scene, said she was in her bedroom when her lights flickered.

"I heard one humongous explosion," she said. "It was like a bomb."

She went to the window and saw flames shooting out of a manhole. In the next 15 minutes, she heard two more loud explosions. She left her building and said that smoke that "smelled like burning cables" was in the air.

Greta Jorgenson, a financial analyst, said: "I heard a very loud boom and a woman screamed at the top of her lungs. I was really scared and I didn't know what was going on." Officials evacuated three buildings, fire officials said. The electricity to those buildings was turned off while the firefighters did their work, and as of midnight had not been turned on again. An official told residents last night that carbon monoxide levels had been high.

Residents expressed frustration at the incident, which follows a spate of electrical problems that have plagued the area since January.

Ms. López, referring to the previous accidents, in which one woman died, said, "Here we go again."

A spokeswoman for Consolidated Edison said that the incident was being investigated, but gave no details about the cause of the fire. She said that more than one manhole had been burning. A company official at the site told neighbors that the cause appeared to be burning wires.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

March 18, 2004

Apartments Evacuated After Manhole Fire

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Residents of 44 buildings in Brooklyn were forced outdoors last night after burning electric cables in several manholes caused carbon monoxide levels in the buildings to soar to dangerous levels, the authorities said.

The Fire Department responded to a call of seven manhole covers flying into the air outside 100 Hull Street, said William Green, a department spokesman. Burning cables and insulation inside the manholes released the gas, and fire officials evacuated residents from buildings along an entire block of Hull Street near Rockaway Avenue, said Chris Olert, a Consolidated Edison spokesman.

The manhole covers "were popping, there was a lot of activity," Firefighter Green said.

"The lights started dimming inside the building and outside," said Junior Vazquez, a resident. "I'm just hoping they fix the building so we can all go home."

Residents were milling about in the cold last night, waiting to be let back into their homes. The authorities provided a city bus and opened Public School 73 for the displaced residents. Most of the buildings are four-story apartment houses.

What specifically caused the electric cables to ignite was unclear. Carbon monoxide levels had reached 1,000 parts per million, Firefighter Green said. That is 10 times the level at which victims begin vomiting and experience headaches and flulike symptoms. Even so, no one was injured in the incident, officials said.

Last night's fire followed a spate of similar incidents. On Tuesday night, wire corrosion in a manhole on Avenue B in Manhattan caused a fire and explosion that forced residents from three buildings.

Jess Wisloski contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

March 20, 2004

Fires in Manholes, Not a Winter Rarity, Are on the Rise

By IAN URBINA

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/03/20/nyregion/manh.184.jpg
A manhole cover at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street in Midtown. On average, about 2,500 manhole incidents - from smoke seepage to explosions - occur a year, but 4,600 happened last winter, fire officials said.

When a manhole explosion shook the East Village restaurant where Ken Petricig was eating on Tuesday, several people dropped their forks.

"We were all the way down the block, and the whole place went thud," he said. "There must have been unusual conditions for that kind of a jolt."

In fact, fire officials say the number of fires in manholes is on the rise, and the ingredients are far from rare.

Melted snow mixes with street salt and washes into a manhole. The slushy mix corrodes the insulation of the underground electrical wires. The insulation slowly burns, releasing flammable gases. Along comes a spark.

With each slushy winter, these basic conditions return to the roughly 90,000 miles of underground electrical wires, more than half of them older than 30 years.

The last week and a half has seen numerous underground fires and manhole explosions.

On Thursday afternoon, 200 people were evacuated from the area around Hunters Point Boulevard and 31st Place in Long Island City, Queens, after a fire in a manhole released high levels of carbon monoxide, Con Edison said.

The night before, the Fire Department evacuated 44 buildings and more than 100 residents in Brooklyn around 100 Hull Street near Rockaway Avenue, after underground fires sent seven manhole covers airborne. Carbon monoxide levels in the manholes had reached 1,000 parts per million, which is 10 times the level that leaves victims sick and vomiting, fire officials said.

On Tuesday night, fires in two manholes in the East Village - down the block from where Mr. Petricig was eating - spread into the basement of a building on Avenue B near East 11th Street.

And in the previous week, a fire in a manhole on 44th Street east of Times Square forced the evacuation of several restaurants and brought traffic to a standstill on the Times Square block.

Jim Long, a spokesman from the Fire Department, said there might be a larger trend.

On average, about 2,500 total manhole incidents occur each year. Last winter there were 4,600, Mr. Long said.

Manhole incidents can range from simple smoke seepage to explosions that shoot manhole covers several stories into the air, he said.

"It's a big jump, and we're definitely keeping an eye on it," he said. There are no cumulative numbers yet this winter. But Mr. Long said that 915 incidents occurred in January alone, a number roughly on pace to match or surpass last winter's count, he said.

While there were no serious injuries in the recent manhole blasts, Mr. Long said that there was a deadly risk in the carbon monoxide fumes produced by the fires. Rather than seeping upward, the odorless gas could seep sideways into residences, he said.

Explosions also pose serious dangers. Manhole covers, which are cast iron, weigh about 300 pounds. Last August, Julia Craig, a British citizen and fitness instructor living in TriBeCa, was crossing Hudson Street near Franklin Avenue when a manhole cover blew more than 20 feet into the air. Ms. Craig was left with second-degree burns over a quarter of her body from the scalding steam and electrical arc that came from the manhole.

"Predicting these problems are like predicting potholes," Michael S. Clendenin, a Con Ed spokesman, said. "With snow and salt and traffic, you know the problems will come, but you can't say where or exactly when."

Average winters in New York City experience 20 to 25 inches of snowfall. This winter there has already has been more than 40 inches. Last winter more than 55 inches fell.

Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the Sanitation Department, said that salt usage was up this winter. She said that the city had used more than six times the amount used two winters ago when snowfall was light.

Manny Hellen, president of the Utility Workers Union of America, Local 1-2., said, "Con Ed keeps fixating on snow and salt because those are the two variables that are outside their control."

He pointed to aging wires, slackening maintenance policies, cheap materials, and softened inspections as being more important factors to consider.

Katherine L. Boden, chief distribution engineer for Con Ed, said that the utility had tried for years to get the city to switch to a less corrosive de-icer, but the price had been too high.

But Ms. Dawkins said that the city remained open to the idea of using salt alternatives.

"They keep talking about it, but Con Ed has never actually submitted a proposal," she said.

Ms. Boden said that Con Ed was also experimenting with two other potential solutions: wires with thicker insulation and manhole covers with higher ventilation.

The new "double jacketed" wires are less flammable and more durable, but they have been installed in very few places in the city and are only being introduced when old wires fail.

Although around 700 of the "super ventilated" manhole covers have been installed around Grand Central Station, Ms. Boden said it was too early to know if they would help. These covers allow smoke to seep out when there is a problem in a manhole, decreasing the pressure and the severity of any explosion.

But the covers have the disadvantage that higher amounts of salt and water wash into the holes, which add to the corrosion of the wires and the likelihood of eventual problems.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

May 28, 2004

Bills Seek to Rein in Con Ed After Woman's Electrocution

By IAN URBINA

Four months after a young woman was electrocuted in the East Village when she stepped on a Consolidated Edison service box cover, four bills have been introduced in the State Assembly that aim to limit the way Con Ed operates.

One of the bills would forbid Con Ed from passing on the price of negligence settlements to ratepayers. Another would make it illegal for the utility to seal information about negligence settlements. And two competing bills would require Con Ed to conduct regular inspections of its equipment.

"It's near the end of the legislative session, and it's not clear if any of these bills will be enacted into law," said Gerald A. Norlander, director of the Public Utility Law Project, a group in Albany that advocates for low-income and rural consumers. "But the one thing they indicate is that legislators are increasingly nervous, in this era of lighter regulation, about whether utilities are meeting their duty to provide safe and adequate service to the public."

The legislation comes in response to the death on Jan. 16 of Jodie S. Lane, 30, who was electrocuted by a steel service box lid while she walked her two dogs on East 11th Street. Roger S. Lane, Ms. Lane's father, said in an interview from Austin, Tex., that her family hoped to avoid a lawsuit and was negotiating with Con Ed.

Assemblyman Ryan Karben, a Democrat from Rockland County and a member of the Assembly Energy Committee, has introduced a bill to prevent the Public Service Commission, which oversees the state's utilities, from allowing Con Ed to factor the cost of many legal settlements into its requests for rate increases from the commission. Only cases of "gross negligence" are presently excluded from the rate increases.

Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein, a Brooklyn Democrat and chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill forbidding the utility from sealing negligence settlements under confidentiality agreements.

"Quite simply, this legislation is important to enable journalists, lawyers and government agencies to learn promptly about public hazards," Ms. Weinstein said at a news conference in Albany.

Mr. Karben said he drafted his bill after he received a letter from Con Ed's president, Kevin Burke, revealing that since January 2000, Con Ed had received 18 claims of accidental shock. Eleven of those cases have been settled, five are pending, one was dismissed and one was not pursued, the letter said.

"I couldn't help but wonder," Mr. Karben commented the other day. "How much more is there to know about Con Ed's litigation?"

One of the two competing bills proposes a strict schedule for Con Ed to conduct inspections of its service boxes, light poles, manholes and other equipment.

The bill, sponsored by Paul D. Tonko, a Democrat from Amsterdam, N.Y., and the chairman of the Energy Committee, would also require the company to submit the results of the inspections to the Public Service Commission.

The other inspection bill was introduced by Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Democrat from Queens, and is supported by State Senator James W. Wright of Watertown, N.Y., a Republican and chairman of the Senate's Energy and Telecommunications Committee. It proposes less stringent regulations than the Tonko bill, covering service boxes alone.

Chris Olert, a spokesman for Con Ed, said it has already taken "steps to ensure that we continue to provide a safe and reliable electric delivery system for our customers."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

July 14, 2004

New York Asks, Where's Con Ed When Lights Go Out?

By IAN URBINA

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/07/14/nyregion/14CONED.jpg
The city cited Con Ed stopgap measures, called shunts, that run outside the poles where they are more exposed to corrosion. This one is on a traffic light at Prospect Place and Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

How long does it take to fix a light in New York City? Two and a half years, according to a blistering new city assessment of Con Edison's maintenance of New York streetlights and traffic signals.

Not only does the utility face a backlog of 5,700 broken lights and signals - a 60 percent increase over last year - but its use of temporary external wiring to fix serious electrical problems is creating increasing safety risks, the report said.

Con Ed is fully to blame, the city said, for the widespread stray voltage problems that the utility discovered during citywide inspections conducted after an East Village woman was electrocuted by stepping on an electrified steel plate on Jan. 16.

In the report sent last week to the State Public Service Commission, the city's chief lawyer wrote that Con Edison's delay in making permanent repairs "needs to be addressed to eliminate a situation where stray voltage and other safety problems may continue to occur."

The report said that the city was still reinspecting the 1,265 faulty poles that the utility had found in its citywide check, completed on Feb. 18, but that in all 619 of the locations reinspected so far, a contractor had already reported wiring problems with the poles.

Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Ed, said the difficult winter and the need to conduct sudden citywide inspections had kept the utility behind schedule on its repairs. He said the utility has a plan to get the overall number of broken lights down to 2,000 by the end of the year.

"We take outages very seriously," he said, "but we also always give top priority to residential and commercial customers before addressing streetlight outages that involve our equipment."

The city hires private contractors to replace burned-out bulbs in streetlights and traffic signals. When those contractors find that the problem is not the bulb but rather the wiring of the light pole, they issue "stop tags" that instruct Con Ed to fix it.

The city's report found that Con Ed took an average of two and a half years to respond to those stop tags. A streetlight in front of someone's house or store may be dark for that long, but when the utility does get around to fixing the wiring in the pole, it often uses a temporary repair called a shunt, which the city said only made the problem worse.

"Shunts are nothing more than glorified overhead extension cords, but they are used by Con Edison as permanent repairs," the report said. "They are supposed to be used to provide temporary electricity service to streetlights and especially traffic signals that are not receiving electricity," according to the report.

Sometimes traversing several blocks, the shunts run along the outside of the poles, rather than inside, leaving their insulation more exposed to corrosion. Not only are the shunts more likely to leak voltage, the report said, but by depending on them, the utility also leaves the deeper problems uncorrected and growing worse as time passes.

There are now at least 2,500 shunts in the city, some several years old and at least one dating back to 1993, the report said.

The utility said the shunts were necessary to keep the power flowing.

The city's report was a response to a report that Con Ed filed with the Public Service Commission on May 21 discussing the stray voltage problem. In that report, the utility blamed the city for about 38 percent of the poles that were leaking voltage, accepted responsibility for around 43 percent, and said responsibility for 18 percent remained unclear.

But the city disagreed that it bore any fault for the leaking power, noting that all the poles it found had previous stop tags showing that a contractor had previously found a wiring problem.

Gerald A. Norlander, director of the Public Utilities Law Project, a public interest law firm in Albany, said the broken streetlights were part of a larger problem. Con Ed's contract with the city does not give the utility enough motivation to fix problems in a timely fashion, he said. Because the electricity used by the city's light poles and traffic lights is not metered, the city pays a lump sum regardless of whether the bulbs are on or off. "Con Ed keeps the money even when the city draws less current, so why would the utility be in a rush to fix those bulbs?" Mr. Norlander asked.

Under the utility's rate agreement, about 3.5 percent of the city's streetlights and signals are allowed to be dark, he noted.

"That leaves far too much wiggle room," said Mr. Norlander, comparing Con Ed unfavorably with New York State Electric & Gas Company and Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, which together serve most upstate areas. Their municipal street lighting rules obligate those utilities to provide "continuous, regular and uninterrupted supply of service" and assumes failure rate for streetlights around 0.15 percent, he said.

State regulators have also given Con Ed few incentives to increase spending on maintenance. Con Edison charges customers based on budget estimates reviewed by the Public Service Commission when it last set the utility's rates in 2000. By underspending on maintenance since then, Mr. Norlander said, the utility has pocketed an extra $33 million - the difference between budgeted amounts and actual expenses as cited in a report that Con Ed files in Albany every six months.

Mr. Clendenin rejected Mr. Norlander's criticism. "In recent years we have invested in the overall maintenance and upgrade of our system well beyond what has been budgeted," he said. "We are constantly assessing the system's needs and making improvements, and we continue to provide the most reliable service in the country."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/07/13/nyregion/14CONED.chart.jpg

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Our Dangerous Electricity Infrastructure (http://gothamgazette.com/article/tech/20040727/19/1069)

[ZippyTheChimp]

September 29, 2004

Annual Inspections of Electrical Hazards Required

By IAN URBINA

Consolidated Edison will be required to inspect its equipment annually to protect against stray voltage, and to publish the results, under a safety law passed by the City Council yesterday.

To double-check the inspections done by Con Ed and other electricity providers in the city, the new law also requires the City Department of Transportation to check at least 250 randomly selected sites every year. It also requires utilities to fix hazards within 24 hours of their discovery.

The law comes in response to the death of Jodie S. Lane, 30, an East Village woman who was killed while walking her dogs on East 11th Street on Jan. 16 after she stepped on an electrified metal lid covering a service box.

"These utilities cannot continue to operate without strict standards," said Councilwoman Margarita López, who proposed the law.

At a City Hall news conference before the 51-0 vote, Council Speaker Gifford Miller said, "No one should ever live in fear that their next step could be their last."

Chris Olert, a spokesman for Con Ed, said it had already begun an annual testing program for stray voltage. "Public safety is our top priority," he said.

Alex Wilbourne, 30, Ms. Lane's companion, was at the hearing, and spoke emotionally in favor of the legislation. "The most important issue here is enforcement," he said

The legislation comes almost a month after the Public Service Commission proposed a similar set of statewide inspection regulations.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

November 24, 2004

Utility Will Pay $7.2 Million in Woman's Electrocution

By IAN URBINA and SABRINA TAVERNISE

Nearly a year after a woman was electrocuted while walking her dogs on a wet East Village street, Consolidated Edison has agreed to pay her family more than $6.2 million and to set up a $1 million scholarship fund in her name at Columbia University, where she was a doctoral student.

The settlement, announced late yesterday, ended months of negotiations between Con Edison and the family of the woman, Jodie S. Lane, who died the night of Jan. 16 after stepping on an electrified metal plate near a bakery on East 11th Street.

Ms. Lane's death set off a firestorm of criticism of the utility that led to aggressive new safety rules and citywide inspections of electrical equipment that turned up hundreds of locations where the public was exposed to stray voltage.

Under the terms of the settlement, Con Edison will provide a $1 million fund at the Teachers College for scholarships and research in the clinical psychology department, where Ms. Lane, 30, was completing her degree.

The Jodie Lane Fund - which will receive five annual installments of $200,000 each - will be established after legal proceedings are completed, probably early next year, said a spokesman for the college, Joe Levine.

In an unusual move, Con Edison will form a panel consisting of three electrical safety experts - two chosen by a foundation Ms. Lane's family will create, and one by the utility - that will meet periodically to review the company's safety performance.

It was the Lane family's idea that a settlement include an education aspect, and Ms. Lane's father, Roger M. Lane, said yesterday by telephone from his home in Texas that the settlement "will lead to a great way to memorialize my daughter through the scholarship at Columbia."

"A settlement like this is never easy to achieve, but I think the parties to the settlement acted in a first-class manner and the end result is something quite unusual," he said.

The Lane family will use part of the money to create the Jodie S. Lane Public Safety Foundation, which will pursue efforts to improve public safety in New York, Mr. Lane said.

The metal plate Ms. Lane stepped on had become electrified by a wire inside a utility box that had not been properly insulated. The shock killed her, though her dogs survived. Since then, her father, a 57-year-old engineer, haunted by her death, has learned about electrical systems and pushed Con Ed to overhaul its safety policies.

Those efforts were part of yesterday's settlement. The panel of electrical experts will monitor the utility's efforts to expand training for first responders in handling electrical emergencies. It will also oversee the utility's efforts to detect and repair stray-voltage problems, and produce reports that it will release to the public and the Lane family.

Of the $6.25 million to be paid to the Lane family, $5.27 million is for the claim of wrongful death and $975,000 is for Ms. Lane's pain and suffering, according to papers filed in Surrogate's Court in Manhattan yesterday. Under the terms of the settlement, the company will pay about $7.25 million, including the scholarship.

Eugene R. McGrath, chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, said in a statement yesterday that "the men and women of Con Edison deeply regret the tragic death of Jodie S. Lane," and that "this settlement allows us to demonstrate our continuing commitment to making New York a better place."

In settling, the company appeared to acknowledge fault in Ms. Lane's death, a conclusion its own investigators seemed to have reached several months after she died, when they found that workers had improperly insulated a wire.

Legal experts said the settlement was remarkable in several ways. Wrongful death settlements in which the person who died was unmarried and childless, as was Ms. Lane, are rarely so big. And the amount exceeded the maximum single payout from the federal fund set up to compensate families of Sept. 11 victims, which was just under $7 million.

"It's unusually large," said Oscar Chase, a law professor at New York University Law School. "This is definitely in the upper range of what I've seen in any case in New York."

Also, the choice of establishing a scholarship fund is unusual. Funds given to a third party are sometimes part of class action suits, when a company does not want to appear to be admitting wrongdoing, but not often part of cases like Ms. Lane's, said John C. Coffee, Jr., a professor of law at Columbia University.

The fund will bear her name and carry her memory, and that is what is important to her family and her former doctoral adviser, Barry A. Farber. Ms. Lane was writing a book for children who suffer from attention deficit disorder, Mr. Farber said, and the fund will help ensure that the research she was doing will continue.

"I'm struck and gratified by the generosity of the family," said Mr. Farber, a professor of clinical psychology at Teachers College. "It's a wonderful way of remembering her, and it's so consistent with who she was and what she would have wanted."

Ms. Lane was further memorialized in September, when Community Board 3, which includes the East Village, voted to rename 11th street between Avenue A and Second Avenue Jodie Lane Place. The City Council will vote on the proposal in coming months.

As a result of Ms. Lane's death, state and city officials imposed strict new rules on how the utility guards against electrical hazards. In September, the City Council passed a law requiring Con Edison to inspect almost all of its equipment annually to protect against stray voltage, and it required the utility to publish the results of these inspections.

In October, state regulators passed similar inspection rules, while also requiring all utilities in the state to report cases in which people are injured by stray voltage within an hour of the incident. Con Ed said it has already begun a comprehensive program of research and development targeted at eliminating stray voltage incidents. This program began immediately following Ms. Lane's death and is expected to continue.

Mr. Lane said the settlement would not take away his pain, but would give some hope that her death was not in vain.

"Our family will never have closure because we will always live with the pain of this loss," he said, adding that, "hopefully it will help prevent the problems that caused our loss."

Perhaps it was Mr. Farber who put it most succinctly.

"It's a remarkable family - they've taken their grief and found a way of transforming it into meaning," he said

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company