Township Committee Needs to Investigate JCP&L Storm Emergency Response

The Washington Township Committee needs to take steps to investigate JCP&L's response to the electrical outages that resulted from hurricane Irene's impact on our town. While there is no doubt that the storm itself was a unique event, the utility's repair/restoral response, information on service restoral for the public, and automated problem reporting sytem need to be reviewed. It would appear that JCP&L is overly dependent on out of State repair crews for response to significant electrical service outages. Some residents say they have frequent outages of service even without major weather related events. Others said they reported their outage to JCP&L only to call the next day to check on the status of repairs and were told there was no record of their call. Estimates of 1-3 days, changing to 3-4 days, changing to 4-5 days impacted residents decisions on whether to leave their homes and seek shelter elsewhere. The Township Committee needs to have some senior level operational personnel from the utility come to a public meeting and explain what went wrong, how they identified weaknesses and what they plan to do about it. Winter is fast approaching and we may be able to expect additional service interruptions due to weather problems. Service outages when temperatures are below 30 degrees are even worse than summer outages.