Storm Hits Newark Hard: Hospital Loses Power, Trees Down (PHOTOS)

NEWARK, NJ — Newark wasn’t spared the wrath of Wednesday’s storm, with a large power outage touching the city’s South Ward and temporarily knocking out electricity to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.

“There are trees and electric wires down all over Newark,” city officials stated Wednesday night.

Newark city officials said the trees and wires were blocking workers’ ability to plow those streets and were creating an extremely dangerous condition.

According to a Wednesday night statement from Newark municipal officials:

“The city is in the process of cutting up the trees and removing the wires in order to resume plowing. If you encounter a downed tree or wire, please report it to 973-733-4311. Do NOT try to move trees or heavy limbs by yourself and do not touch wires. If you do, you could be electrocuted. Our crews will be out all night working to clear the affected streets.”

A Beth Israel spokesperson told RLS Media that PSE&G experienced an issue with a transformer on Lehigh Avenue that supplies power to parts of the hospital around 4:50 p.m. on Wednesday.

The hospital temporarily lost power, causing the emergency generators to kick on with no interruption to patient care, the spokesperson said. PSE&G restored power to the building a short time afterward.

Newark’s public schools were closed Thursday due to the storm aftermath, administrators said.

Newark wasn’t the only Essex County town hit hard by the storm. Roads became impassable in Verona and Cedar Grove, car crashes were reported in Millburn, downed power lines were seen in Maplewood and Livingston and trees were down in Montclair. Check out the below article for more examples of storm damage and issues in Essex County.

• See related article: Essex County Sees Crashes, Outages, Bad Roads

PSE&G: 80,000 LOSE POWER

If you lost power during the storm, you weren’t the only one. PSE&G said that about 80,000 of its 2.2 million customers were without power as a result of yesterday’s storm.

According to PSE&G:

Working overnight and this morning, the utility has restored about 190,000 customers since the storm began.

• Heavy, wet snow brought down large trees, branches and wires across PSE&G’s service territory. Electric service crews worked through the night and will continue to work in difficult conditions to restore outages as safely and as quickly as possible.
• The restoration process will likely take several days given the damage from falling trees that will need to be cleared. The utility is mobilizing additional employees to help with damage assessment so that it can better determine restoration times. We ask our customers to be patient as we deal with these difficult conditions and work to safely restore power.
• PSE&G’s 16 walk-in customer service centers are expected to open at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
• Downed wires should always be considered “live.” Do not approach or drive over a downed line and do not touch anything that it might be in contact with.
• To prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, do not run any gasoline powered engine, including generators and snow blowers, in a garage or any other enclosed space. Clear snow from dryer and hot water heater vents.
• PSE&G encourages customers to report downed wires and power outages by logging in to My Account on www.pseg.com, texting the word “OUT” to 4PSEG, or calling PSE&G’s Customer Service line at 1-800-436-PSEG.
• The utility offers customers a number of ways to stay in touch and informed before, during and after a storm. These tools can be found at PSE&G’s mobile-friendly website www.pseg.com in the “Storm Center.” Updated every 15 minutes, PSE&G’s mobile-friendly “Outage Map” displays the location and status of power outages.

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Photos: City of Newark