????那的確是一個黑漆漆、暴風雨肆虐的夜晚。

????10月29日，颶風桑迪襲擊紐約城的當晚，遭遇Consolidated Edison供電中斷的不僅僅是曼哈頓第39街以南很多地區，還包括Con Ed的總部。

????Con Ed的員工不得不乘橡皮筏沿著洪水浸泡的Avenue C一路向北，穿行于飄浮的汽車間，營救被困在東13街癱瘓電站的同事們。在Con Ed總部，工程師們為恢復停運的電廠，冒險采用快捷方式，最終獲得了成功。假如適得其反，紐約人可能要等到下周三才能亮燈。

????而且和我們大家一樣，颶風桑迪過去這么些天，Con Ed的燃油也已幾近告罄。

????即便如此，通過不間斷的辛勤努力和無數次精心算計的冒險，Con Ed仍然在不到4天的時間里就恢復了曼哈頓的供電，比它在颶風后第二天承諾的時間早了約12個小時。

????“他們做得非常出色，讓曼哈頓的地下電網恢復了運營，”哥倫比亞大學（Columbia University）兼職教授、能源問題研究專家羅杰?安德森表示。

????根據對Con Ed首席執行官凱文?布克、他的兩位高級副手、幾位公司管理人員和應急反應人員的采訪，《財富》雜志（Fortune）首次將多個零碎的片段串連成了一段完整的故事：再現了在這場颶風造成紐約城有史以來最嚴重的洪災之后，Con Ed實現恢復供電的過程。

????即便是兩周后的今天，Con Ed還有很多工作沒有完成。還有3,900位Con Ed客戶尚未恢復供電，但是，要知道，此次颶風過后最嚴重時期曾有近百萬人斷電，相比當時的情況，這個數字已經微乎其微。另有22,000幢建筑和房屋由于遭到非常嚴重的損毀，Con Ed也無法恢復對其供電。比如，在布魯克林Red Hook社區的住宅項目中，就有老人或病人被困在沒有供暖、供電和電梯服務的高層中。Con Ed稱，Red Hook的問題部分在于Con Ed的設備和大樓設備被洪水淹了。上周末，Con Ed估計颶風桑迪給公司造成的損失可能高達5.5億美元。

????當然，他們也了些錯誤。Con Ed曾留意提防其他電站進水，但從未料到13街的電站會被淹。這個電站的防洪墻高度是12英尺，比桑迪引發的洪水低大約兩英尺。Con Ed還在颶風過后當周打電話給一些客戶稱，供電已經恢復，后來不得不再打電話，告訴他們，此前的通知無效。一位客戶發微博稱：“Con Ed，別再玩弄我的感情了！”布克親自前往威斯特徹斯特致歉。紐約州州長安德魯?庫默一直批評公用事業的颶風應對舉措，其中就包括Con Ed。

????但不管怎么說，颶風桑迪過后，Con Ed客戶的狀況比起附近其他公用事業公司的客戶要好多了。颶風后第二天，布克承諾，將在周六晚上之前恢復對曼哈頓的供電。供電從周五開始恢復，當時新澤西州的PSE&G和長島的LIPA的很多客戶仍陷在一片黑暗之中，沒有電，何時能恢復供電也不知道。上周末，150名示威者聚集在Long Island Power Authority（LIPA）的門口，指責它的颶風應對舉措效率低下。

????Con Ed受益于大部分線路都埋在曼哈頓的街道地下，基本沒有受到颶風的損害。但Con Ed的地下電網和被洪水淹沒的電站也導致它在試圖恢復供電時遇到的工程技術難題遠超競爭對手。紐約市場布隆伯格也贊揚了布克和他的團隊。

????It was, truly, a dark and stormy night.

????On October 29th, the night Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City, Consolidated Edison lost power not only to much of Manhattan below 39th Street, but to its own headquarters as well.

????Con Ed employees had to take a raft up the flooded Avenue C, weaving in and out of floating cars, to rescue co-workers trapped in the company's crippled East 13th Street power station. Back at headquarters, the company's engineers took a risky short-cut in restoring a downed power plant that ended up paying off. Had it back-fired New Yorkers might have still been in the dark until the middle of the next week.

????And like the rest of us, days after the storm Con Ed nearly ran out of gas.

????And yet, through non-stop work and a number of well-calculated gambles, Con Ed was able to get the power back on in Manhattan in less than four days, about 12 hours faster than the utility promised a day after the storm.

????"They did a wonderful job getting Manhattan's underground network back up and running," says Roger Anderson, who studies energy issues and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

????Through interviews with CEO Kevin Burke, two of his top lieutenants and a handful of the company's other managers and emergency response personal, Fortune has pieced together for the first time the story of how Con Ed was able to turn the lights back on in the wake of a storm that caused the worst flooding in New York City's recorded history.

????Even two weeks later, Con Ed's job is not done. There are still 3,900 Con Ed customers without power, a fraction of a fraction of the nearly million at the height of the storm. Another 22,000 building and houses are so damaged Con Ed can't restore power to them. In the housing projects of Brooklyn's Red Hook, for instance, elderly or sick residents are stuck on high floors with no heat, power or elevator service. Con Ed says the problem in Red Hook is partly to do with its equipment and the equipment in the buildings, which were flooded. Over the weekend, Con Ed estimated Hurricane Sandy will end up costing the company as much as $550 million.

????There were some mistakes. While it watched other stations, Con Ed never anticipated the flooding of its 13th Street power facility. That plant's flood walls at 12 feet proved to be about two feet too short for Sandy. Con Ed also called some customers the week of the storm to tell them that their power was back on, only to call them back and tell them to disregard the message. One customer tweeted, "Coned stop playing with my feelings!" Burke traveled to Westchester to apologize. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been critical of the utilities' response to the storm, including Con Ed.

????But by all accounts, Con Ed's customers fared better in the wake of Hurricane Sandy than those of other nearby utilities. A day after the storm, Burke promised power would be on in Manhattan by Saturday evening. It started coming back on Friday at a time when many customers of New Jersey's PSE&G and Long Island's LIPA were still in the dark, with no power and no idea when it would come back on. Over the weekend, 150 protestors picketed Long Island Power Authority's offices over its response to the storm.

????Con Ed (ED) benefited from the fact that much of its wires, buried under the streets of Manhattan, were mostly untouched in the storm. But Con Ed's underground network and flooded power stations created a more difficult engineering challenge in turning the power back on than its rivals had. Mayor Bloomberg has praised Burke and his team.