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TagsBY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Days after the late-October snowstorm hit, too many New Jersey residents are still in the process of recovering, and people are angry. About 800,000 households lost power overall.
NJ.com questions the urgency of the repair crews. They say the Board of Public Utilities needs to sort out the delays that have been involved in the restoration of power. And they mention that there needs to be better communication in areas served by JCP&L and Public Service Electric and Gas about when a town’s power will return.
Ron Morano, of Jersey Central Power & Light said his company’s crews have been working double shifts, and two-thirds of its affected customers had power returned by Wednesday afternoon. And Anne Hoskins of PSE&G, said the storm was more complicated than Hurricane Irene, because the damage was to individual power lines to a particular house, not damage to a central power station where one repair could fix thousands.
A lot of local officials are saying that the utility companies have not responded well. But firstenergycorp.com says the company has 5,000 employees, and crews from other utilities working on the recovery. Senior Vice President Chuck Jones writes that crews worked two full days to untangle a circuit that feeds 3,000 customers in one area, removing 100 tree limbs and replacing 10 broken poles in the process.
JCP&L reports they have restored power to over 80 percent of its affected customers, and expect to return power to 95 percent by Thursday evening, The company’s web site lists its restoration estimates by day and county and by town.
According to Livingston Patch, the number of PSE&G outages remaining is 21,000 this morning, most of them in Bergen and Essex counties. Today the company plans to focus on restoring individual service lines taken down by falling trees.
PSE&G has returned power to over 95 percent of its customers by Thursday. They have 262 crews and troubleshooters, 116 line contractors, and 240 tree crews working on the restoration.
