Even as residents of a partially-darkened township are itching to finally shut down their generators, flip on the lights, and enjoy the modern amenities they've spent the past week without, they must have patience, said Mayor Rich Phelan, because there are few answers regarding when power will be fully restored.
The First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains saw over a dozen trees fall in its graveyard, which has tombstones that date back to the 18th century.
Township officials were told by Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) on Tuesday to expect the outage to continue for seven to 10 days, he said, and that timetable remained in place on Friday afternoon, even as power was slowly being brought back to areas like West Parkway and Sunset Road.
Although he hoped that 75 percent of the town could be back online by Sunday, residents must still hold fast, the mayor said.
"I know it's difficult under the circumstances," Phelan said Thursday afternoon. "I know people are angry… I'm not making excuses for (the utility) but you have to take this into perspective — almost the entire state is without power, and you're talking an enormous amount of destruction. That will take a while to restore."
However, he bemoaned the lack of information disseminated by JCP&L, and said that "it would be nice" to have more updates in regards to when the grid will be up and running again.
"I don't think they're giving us good answers, but I don't think they're giving anyone answers," he said. "Their standard answer has been 10 days, and they haven't deviated from that."
Although JCP&L spokesman Chris Eck said that the utility prioritizes emergency locations such as hospitals, apparently Chilton Hospital was not on the list — the West Parkway medical center was out of power from Monday night to early Friday morning, and relied on its diesel generators to maintain the electricity for about 155 patients.
Hospital officials were frustrated by JCP&L's unresponsiveness throughout the week, said Anna Scalora, Chilton's director of marketing and public relations, and they're worried that with major tropical storms and nor'easters becoming more the rule than the exception in New Jersey, another extended outage isn't far off.
"We need to talk about a long-term strategy (with the utility), because this is not acceptable and it can't happen again… they've had this pattern of unreliability," she said. "We really have to have a plan together."
Fortunately for the hospital staff, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reacted with what might be unprecedented speed: a generator — along with a crew to install it — arrived at around 4 p.m. on Thursday, allowing the hospital to reach about 60 percent of its electrical needs.
Eck could not explain why JCP&L took so long to restore Chilton's power, although he suspected that it was because there was "simply so much damage between their source of power and their building" that it took that long to get to them.
As far as the rest of the town, Eck said that the utility doesn't issue hard dates for restoration because if unknown variables arise, it would be forced to rescind it. With more than 450 damaged utility poles, 12,000 downed trees, and 830,000 of the company's 1.1 million customers in New Jersey out of power (including 3,805 in Pequannock as of Friday), there could be quite a few variables.
He also noted that just because residents don't see a truck on their street doesn't mean that no work is being done; generally after a big storm, he said, the utility first fixes its high-voltage lines, which serve the substations that in turn distribute power to feeder lines that run into neighborhoods and business districts.
"Oftentimes, after a storm like this, customers are frustrated that they don't see a truck in their neighborhood…but the reason for this is that we're still working up-line from you," he said. "The amount of time (it takes) will depend on how many breaks there are in the lines between their house and the power source. If there's 50 miles of wire that the storm tore down, it will be 50 miles of repairs."
Eck said that the utility, which has called in crews from as far away as California and Washington State, is hoping to have the majority of its customers online by about Wednesday, but with the amount of damage that was caused by what was "absolutely the worst storm in (JCP&L's) history," he expects pockets to remain without electricity for up to a week after that.
The blackout has also affected the township's schools, which were closed all of last week. A decision on whether to open schools on Nov. 5 is expected to be made by Superintendent Victor Hayek on Sunday night.
Once power is restored and the traffic lights on Route 23 begin functioning again, the mayor said that he expects life to normalize "pretty quick," and it's unlikely that the damages will have any lasting effects on the township's budget. A flood, he said, would have been much worse due to the enormous garbage collection costs that inevitably follow the event.
"Flooding would have had a severe impact, but I don't think this is going to be anywhere close," he said.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/177202291_Pequannock_struggles_through_week_without_power.html
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