Nearly 2 million U.S. utility customers were living through their third or fourth day without electricity following Hurricane Irene, the U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday.

More than 1.8 million utility customers in 14 East Coast states were still in the dark late Wednesday morning, down from 6.7 million when the hurricane swept up the coast over the weekend.

Many utilities relied on crews on loan from utilities in other states, as well as hired contractors, to help clear trees and branches and repair electricity facilities.

Long after the wind and rain died down, the storm has left flooding in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, making some areas inaccessible by car and truck and hampering power restoration efforts.

In Connecticut, more than 366,000 were without power Wednesday, down from about 702,000 during the storm, the DOE reported. More than 300,000 customers of Northeast Utilities' (NU) Connecticut Light & Power were still in the dark, about one quarter of the total customer base.

In New York, more than 323,000 customers were without electricity, with more than half of them--189,500--served by the Long Island Power Authority.

In New York City and Westchester County, more than 19,000 customers of Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED) were in the dark Wednesday.

Almost 190,000 in New Jersey were without power, most of them customers of FirstEnergy Corp.'s (FE) Jersey Central Power & Light. More than 15,000 customers of ConEd's Orange & Rockland utility also were without electricity, while more than 42,000 customers of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc.'s (PEG) PSE&G were still without electricity.

In Virginia, more than 287,000 customers were still in the dark, many of them for the fourth day.

Dominion Resources Inc. (D) said it has restored power to 77% of customers affected by the storm, although nearly 250,000 of its Virginia customers were still without electricity Wednesday. Richmond and other inland areas were particularly hard hit by Irene's high winds that lasted as long as 12 hours in some areas. The wind knocked down trees and branches, which in turn toppled hundreds of utility poles and power lines, said Dominion spokesman Dan Donovan.

Dominion had 7,000 people working on the restoration effort, many of them from utilities in Michigan, Indiana and five other states, as well as contractors and retired Dominion employees, Donovan said.

In Massachusetts, about 144,000 utility customers still lacked power service, the DOE said. National Grid (NGG, NG.LN) recently reported more than 100,000 of its Massachusetts customers were without power while NStar (NST) said it had 35,000 outages.

In Maryland, more than 171,000 were still without power, with 140,000 of them in the Baltimore area, served by Constellation Energy Group Inc.'s (CEG) Baltimore Gas and Electric.

In Rhode Island, more than 112,000 were still without power, with more than 97,000 of them in National Grid's service territory.

-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6468; cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com

--Eric Holthaus contributed to this article

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