As you’ve seen from news reports and on-the-scene photos, clean up after Hurricane Sandy smashed into the East Coast will be long and arduous. Over eight million households were without power as of this morning and over 1.8 million customers in hardest-hit New Jersey have no electricity,

But progress is being made.

Talking Points Memo reports that Consolidated Edison, who serves New York City, tweeted that 109,000 customers have had power restored. The utility also tweeted, “Customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who are served by underground electric equipment should have power back within three days.”

The Exelon subsidiary, PECO, said that as of yesterday afternoon, power was restored to 350,000 customers but 420,000 remain without power as of this morning. The utility called Sandy, “the most damaging storm in company history.”

The Baltimore Sun reports that Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), another Exelon subsidiary serving Maryland has also made progress:

As of 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, more than 280,000 BGE customers have had their lights turned back on since Sandy — first a hurricane and then a post-tropical cyclone — caused the first of the outages Sunday. Much of the power loss hit Monday as the storm's winds and rain intensified.

The newspaper posted a video from a BGE staging area at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.

Thankfully, like these PECO workers in Philadelphia, crews are working 16-hour shifts day and night in treacherous conditions up and down the East Coast to get the lights back on.

For both them and the rest of you in these areas, stay safe.