Verizon Outage Affects Thousands in North Jersey

Tens of thousands of Verizon customers in Newark and northern New Jersey are without service Monday because of a power issue with one of the utility company's central offices on William Street in Newark, according to a spokesman.

Lee Gierczynski, manager of Verizon media relations for New Jersey, said the problem started around 8 a.m. and was  expected to be fixed by 2 p.m., when systems will "slowly be powered back on."

"Our technicians are on site, working to resolve the issue," he said. "It's not a commercial power problem, but it's a problem with regulating power coming into the facility."

Gierczynski said the problem does affect 911 call centers and that those centers have switched to alternate numbers until the problem is fixed.

— Joshua Wilwohl