BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's been a difficult few days for residents of Marine Drive Apartments, after power went out throughout the complex around 8 p.m. Tuesday, leaving them hot and in the dark until temporary power generators went on around 2 a.m.

"The elevators were out again yesterday, and we had no electricity again this morning, just for a little while, but it's a pain," said Leandra Krzywinski, a resident.

The Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority, which runs Marine Drive, says the outage was caused by a transformer malfunction.

BMHA's executive director says the buildings were built in 1950 and systems wear out.
But while they say the issue is being remedied, residents we spoke with say the buildings need to be updated.

"What really was bothering me was that when the electricity went down, there were no lights in the hallway or the stairwell," said Nieves Rodriguez, another resident.

"It's frustrating. It's been frustrating for a while," said Krzywinski.

Krzywinski says she's lived at Marine Drive for more than 25 years, and says she thinks it was better before the BMHA took over operations.

"BMHA, to me, takes too long to take care of things. We have to call BMHA for them to do anything. If somebody pulls the fire alarm, we have to wait. It was two hours one day that we had to wait for the alarm to go off," she said.

Following the power outage, residents say they think the complex should have back-up generators installed, because with the hot summer we've been having, they're concerned this will happen again.

"We were so hot, we were able to walk down, we actually got in the car and drove around a little while and put the air conditioner on. But not everyone can walk down the stairs," said Kryzwinski.

Rodriguez said, "There's a lot of people in my building that are wheelchair bound."

The BMHA's executive director released a statement saying in part: "We are pleased with how quickly our staff and National Grid have worked to restore power for our residents.”

We reached out to BMHA several times Thursday requesting an on-camera interview, but were told no one was available to speak with us.