'Multi-Day' Restoration For 123K Without Power In Morris County

MORRIS COUNTY, NJ - The flashbacks to Superstorm Sandy were unavoidable as officials told those rendered powerless by Tropical Storm Isaias that restoration would be a matter of days, not hours.

And that is if you could get an update at all.

"We currently expect that this will be a multi-day restoration effort," said Cliff Cole, a Jersey Central Power & Light spokesman. The utility supplies electricity to a large part of northern and central New Jersey. "As the weather calms down, crews will continue to assess damage in order to provide estimated restoration times."

The company's outage map was inconsistent and incorrect throughout the storm. While the majority of the customers did not receive restoration estimates, many that did saw those times pass without update. Some, even received phone calls, texts and emails telling them their power had been restored when it had not.

One customer attempted to inform the utility of the misfire and received error messages through their automated system. When they reached a customer service representative they were told there were 500 homes without power in their area. The map showed 9,000.

The storm Tuesday brought strong winds and heavy rains buffeting the area that closed roads, felled trees, flooded roads and robbed over 123,000 homes of power in Morris County.

According to JCP&L, these are the towns, the number of outages and the number of total customers in the town as of 10 a.m. Wednesday:

BOONTON TOWN, 3,856, 3,870,
BOONTON TOWNSHIP, 1,824, 1,828,
CHATHAM BOROUGH, 525, 3,626
CHATHAM TOWNSHIP, 1,463, 4,490
CHESTER BOROUGH, 572, 1,128
CHESTER TOWNSHIP, 2,840, 3,040
DENVILLE TOWNSHIP, 5,346, 7,708
DOVER TOWN, 1,756, 6,643
EAST HANOVER TOWNSHIP, 1,564, 4,978
FLORHAM PARK BOROUGH, 3,106, 4,927
HANOVER TOWNSHIP, 1,651, 6,822
HARDING TOWNSHIP, 1,747, 1,907
JEFFERSON TOWNSHIP, 8,294, 9,335
KINNELON BOROUGH, 83, 85
LINCOLN PARK BOROUGH, 2,609, 4,647
LONG HILL TOWNSHIP, 1,573, 3,714
MENDHAM BOROUGH, 2,109, 2,111
MENDHAM TOWNSHIP, 2,279, 2,282
MINE HILL TOWNSHIP, 1,276, 1,594
MONTVILLE TOWNSHIP, 8,966, 9,287
MORRIS PLAINS BOROUGH, 1,145, 2,591
MORRIS TOWNSHIP, 5,633, 8,941
MORRISTOWN TOWN, 3,561, 10,093
MOUNT ARLINGTON BOROUGH, 3,043, 3,098
MOUNT OLIVE TOWNSHIP, 4,928, 12,360
MOUNTAIN LAKES BOROUGH, 1,628, 1,632
NETCONG BOROUGH, 51, 1,652
PARSIPPANY TROY HILLS TOWNSHIP, 13,504, 24,089
PEQUANNOCK TOWNSHIP, 5,310, 5,896
RANDOLPH TOWNSHIP, 8,643, 10,684
RIVERDALE BOROUGH, 2,311, 2,316
ROCKAWAY BOROUGH, 809, 3,270
ROCKAWAY TOWNSHIP, 4,840, 10,529
ROXBURY TOWNSHIP, 7,303, 10,269
VICTORY GARDENS BOROUGH, 602, 640
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, 5,853, 7,030
WHARTON BOROUGH, 581, 3,053

Cole added that additional line workers, damage assessors, forestry contractors, and support personnel were on the way to help from non-affected areas.

This post contains reporting by Carl Stoffers.

Thanks for reading! Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site. Have a news tip you'd like to share? Or maybe you have a press release you would like to submit or a correction you'd like to request? Send an email to russ.crespolini@patch.com

Subscribe to your local Patch newsletter. You can also have them delivered to your phone screen by downloading, or by visiting the Google Play store.