West Orange Power Outages Hit Schools, Traffic Lights

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Multiple power outages were reported across West Orange on Friday. The outages affected two public schools and several traffic lights in the township, officials said.

West Orange Public School District administrators said that Gregory Elementary School and Roosevelt Middle School experienced temporary power outages. Students and staff were “safe” and temporarily placed in classrooms with “natural light.”

School lavatories were functioning and lunch as prepared as usual. Power was restored later that morning and there was no change to the schedule for the remainder of the day, West Orange school administrators said.

• See related article: Here's Who To Call If Your Power Goes Out, West Orange

Meanwhile, multiple power outages were reported throughout the township, knocking out traffic lights at Northfield/Gregory, Walker/Gregory and Mt. Pleasant/Prospect, municipal officials reported.

PSE&G, state and county officials were notified about the outages, West Orange officials said.

“PSE&G believes that the issue stems from an out of town switching station and are working on it,” township officials said Friday morning.

“I was in cab very early this morning waiting at the Northfield/Gregory traffic lights and the electric pole exploded right next to us showering the car with sparks,” one commenter wrote on Facebook. “Scary!”

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