It Was the Perfect Second Storm, Says JCP&L

After yet another power outage in Long Valley on Wed., Nov. 16, that began at approximately 12:30 p.m., residents are frustrated and looking for answers, but according to Ron Morano, Media Relations for JCP&L, the company has been doing everything in its power to meet the challenges that Mother Nature has hurled toward Northern New Jersey in the last two months.

The Nov. 16 outage lasted for some residents until approximately 7 p.m., and while it didn't involve days, the cumulative effect is that, for many, patience is wearing thin.   

According to Lt. Mark Niemynski of the Washington Township Police, the cause of the outage was a fallen tree in Chester. 

At approximately 1:30 p.m., JCP&L's online outage map showed somewhere between 500 and 2000 customers without power in the Long Valley area.

It also showed under 500 customers without power in areas that it designates as Hackettstown, Washington, Califon and Chester (the power company lists services outages per zip code).

 to answer questions and address concerns.

Morano said he knows that customers are frustrated but said JCP&L has attempted to learn from the experience during Hurricane Irene.

For instance, in preparation for what was to be a highly damaging storm, he said the company called in crews from outside of the state on Friday, the day before the storm on Oct. 29.

He said the company also held daily press conferences and meetings with New Jersey mayors after the October weather event. 

"The degree of damage that occured during the snowstorm was far worse than Hurrican Irene in terms of the damage to trees and electric lines," said Morano.

"There were 8000 locations with downed trees and 80 percent of our customers serviced in Northern NJ had extensive damage," Morano said. 

He said, "The trees just fell apart." 

"When it comes to an area like Long Valley and Morris County, you have a heavily forrested area and with the heavy wet snow and the trees still with most of their leaves -- it was a very a convergence that was sure to cause a great deal of damage," Morano said. 

According to Morano, JCP&L had to replace 600 telephone poles and 6000 spans of wire. 

"The October storm was a devestating storm and it followed a major hurricane that took place just two months prior -- this was an unprecedented situation," said Morano.

The company called in crews from as far away as Nevada. He said there were 5700 extra personnel brought in to deal with the aftermath.

In response to the criticism that the company has not been trimming trees, Morano said the company has been trimming trees on a four year cycle but much of the damage was beyond its normal scope.

"Most of the trees that were damaged were not in the right of way that we normally maintain," he said.

He said the company did tell some customers on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011, the day after the storm, that power would be out until Thursday or Friday.

"And we did restore 66 percent of all customers affected within 72 hours," Morano said. 

With regard to the recent outage on Nov. 16, Morano said he is not surprised that trees are still coming down.

"Given the nature of the damage we experienced from the snow storm and hurricane, it would not be uncommon to continue to see trees fail," he said. 

Going forward, he suggests that customers sign up for status reports from the company via Twitter and check in on its Web site. The company's Twitter name is @jcp_l.