Mayor says switching power utilites beyond Pequannock's reach

Nearly three months after township residents spent a long two weeks without electricity due to Hurricane Sandy, it’s becoming more and more apparent to local officials that for better or worse — and despite their best efforts — they are going to be stuck with Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L).

It wasn’t just the extended outages from the scores of felled trees that frustrated officials, said Pequannock Mayor Rich Phelan, it was the lack of communication about where restoration efforts were that led to the town’s disgust with its electrical provider.

As a result, a number of local towns, including Pequannock, made informal inquiries as to what it would take to switch utilities, but it appears the game of musical chairs will end before it begins because of what Phelan called the "mind-boggling" difficulties associated with it.

It was during a Jan. 3 meeting with state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) President Bob Hanna, Phelan said, that he was told that the town itself would have to buy all of the electrical infrastructure — including the poles, substations, and wires — the cost for which could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

Following that, the town would have to petition the BPU to release it from the franchise agreement that JCP&L has on this piece of the state, and BPU spokesman Greg Reinert said that the onus would be on Pequannock to prove that JCP&L "failed to provide safe, adequate, and proper service" as required under the law.

Even if the board agreed, the town would have to find another utility —such as Public Service Energy & Gas (PSE&G) or Butler Electric — to take over the maintenance of the grid and provide power. However, because not all utilities use the same hardware, a successful transition could require millions of dollars in changes to electrical wires, transformers, and the like.

All in all, the mayor said, the idea has proven an "unrealistic" answer for a town that is still more habitually concerned with the Pompton River’s rising waters than the failings of an aging electrical grid.

"To put the time and money…into trying to do that…might be a big mistake in my eyes," he said. "We’re a small town. We watch our nickels and dimes, and it’s not something that we feel justified chasing. We’ve got a bigger problem, and it’s called flooding."

However, residents still truly spiteful toward JCP&L could always purchase power from one of the plethora of third-party sellers who routinely call their homes during dinnertime, and the town itself could even organize a mass departure from JCP&L by signing up residents and businesses through a process known as "municipal aggregation," Reinert said.

But when the grid goes down, it would still be JCP&L working on the lines, and the switch wouldn't put a dent in the company’s pocket because, according to Reinert, utilities don’t make money off of selling electricity, but off the rate of return on the infrastructure they've built. In other words, the charge to recoup the cost of building the grid is paid regardless of who provides the power.

"You get a bill from (the utility) and it breaks it down: Here’s the cost of the electricity, and here’s the cost of bringing it to you," he said. "And you pay the bill, and the (utility) reimburses the third-party supplier."

Customers’ complaints have been heard ‘loud and clear’

JCP&L has heard the complaints about what many say was an inadequate response to Sandy "loud and clear," said spokesman Ron Morano, especially in regards to the lack of communication between the utility and the municipalities it serves.

In response, the company has developed a series of "new operational practices" designed to provide information to municipal officials about restoration efforts. This, he said, will include things like locating JCP&L liaisons in field offices, hosting teleconference briefings about localized restoration work, deploying "additional company personnel" to work with municipal representatives, and training county and municipal first responders on electrical safety.

The utility would also provide municipalities with maps showing electrical circuit routes in their communities, and is said to be developing mobile apps to help customers report outages and access their account information.

"We communicated very well throughout the storm, but a lack of specific levels of information was the biggest (complaint)," he said. "That’s the area that we’re going to focus on going forward."

The BPU appears to be nudging all electric distribution companies down a similar path, and at its Jan. 23 meeting, mandated that all utilities enact 103 specific actions to "improve their preparedness and responses" to major storms.

According to a press release from the BPU, many of the actions must be done by June 1 (the official start of the 2013 hurricane season) and nearly all must be completed by September. 

The list, among other things, includes demands that the companies make a "global estimated time of restoration" available within 24 hours of a major outage, and requires daily updates for municipal officials concerning both the number of customers that remain without power and how many will be restored each day.

The utilities will have to maintain separate Web pages for each municipality giving a "detailed description" of the electrical grid (including explanations of circuits and substations), and links to information about the restoration process and procedures.

The implementation of the measures, said Reinert, as well as the development of more proactive policies regarding things like vegetation management, represents "another step in the process" toward remedying what went wrong after Sandy.

In Pequannock, though, the proposals were met with sighs and eye rolls; Phelan said it’s deeds, not words, that will make the difference. Saying he doesn’t believe anything will come of this may be an understatement.

"It’s the same story over and over again, and personally I don’t see how it’s going to change much unless they put people on the ground prior to these storms," he said. "I hate to say this, but talk is cheap. (JCP&L) needs to do something, and I don’t think they’re going to."

He was less than enthused about more Web page diagrams that often break down outages by substations instead of political boundaries — leading to inaccuracies in estimating the number of affected residents in a given town — and said that making one field representative beholden to only one town might be a way to fix the communication breakdowns.

"I don’t think that having a Web page that tells me Pequannock has 5,000 residents out is really doing any good because I know it’s inaccurate," he said. "I want a guy in my town that I can talk to… Information is key, because when residents are asking us, we need to be able to tell them something."

Township Manager Dave Hollberg agreed, and said that the daily phone calls about outage numbers and restoration plans were "useless" because the utility didn’t restore people when it said it was going to. As a result, municipal officials often disregarded the reports as soon as they came in.

A local supervisor, though, would have value, especially if that person was given the power to fix small issues if possible, he said.

"It seems like there was a lot of down-time, and a lot of wasted time, in how they made their determinations about how things were to be repaired," he said. "If they gave a little bit of that authority to do the stupid little stuff (to a local contact), I think they’d accomplish a lot more."

But in the end, municipalities — especially small ones like Pequannock — don’t hold the cards, and can do almost nothing if the utility were to fail to perform once again.

"There’s certain things that are within our control, and there’s things that are not within our control," said Phelan. "And if JCP&L does not work with the Township of Pequannock, it’s not like Pequannock can say, ‘Straighten up your act or we’re going to fire you.’"

Instead, officials are left hoping, as Phelan does, that an event like Sandy simply never happens again. Because in the end, it’s all they can do.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/188626341_Mayor_says_switching_power_utilites_beyond_Pequannock_s_reach.html

Local towns reflect on what they learned after Hurricane Sandy

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles about Hurricane Sandy and the lessons learned during one of the most devastating storms to ever hit New Jersey, causing whatGovernor Christie has estimated to be $36.8 billion in destruction. Look for future installments in each forthcoming Sunday edition.

Although there are many lessons that local officials might take away from the devastation brought by last October’s Hurricane Sandy,Pequannock Township Manager Dave Hollberg may have summed it up best in three words: "Never assume anything." Even if it’s something that you thought was a sure thing.

"I don’t think I ever could have ever imagined that an entire town (would be) without power for the better part of two weeks in the United States of America in the 21st century," he said. "You always think you’ve planned for the worst case, and then something else comes up."

That has proven to be the main lesson emergency management officials learned: No amount of preparation is too much, and even that will not be enough when a mega-storm like Sandy comes hurtling up the coast.

Towns like Pequannock, which contains just under 14,000 people inside its 7 square miles, were hit particularly hard due to their picturesque tree-lined thoroughfares, which, after hundreds of those trees fell due to the gusts of wind measuring 50–80 mph, became tangled spider webs of branches, power lines, and telephone polls.

Precautions taken in the last two years — from the creation of the township’s emergency AM radio station to the installation of generators at the 10,000-gallon municipal fueling station on Alexander Avenue — proved invaluable, however, and led to several "sighs of relief" from officials as darkened commercial gas stations remained unable to pump what was left in their tanks.

The gas shortage, said Hollberg, was something that caught them completely off guard, and being as it was unclear as to whether it was caused by a minor supply disruption or a serious refinery issue, they didn’t have time to think a new plan through. Although it never got to the point where municipal and emergency vehicles were running low, it could have been markedly worse if the shortage had continued or the Alexander Avenue generator had failed.

"We didn’t really have a good contingency plan for that ahead of time, and we had to make it up on the fly," he said.

Backup plans were "dire," he said, and involved sending out the minimum of EMS needed for a given incident — think one fire truck per call — and the issuing of gas certificates to volunteers to ensure they could still reach their stations.

"The demand started to increase on that supply, and if weren’t going to be able to get anything in new. Then you had to be able to stretch that for an indefinite period of time," he said.

‘We should be able to…function as government’

A serious consequence of the outages, he said, was the near-total cessation of normal government functions, from tax collections to the holding of the national election, which was moved to Pequannock Township High School (PTHS) and held by the light of portable lamps with electricity provided by a massive Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)- provided diesel generator.

"We made that up as we went along," he said.

The storm illuminated not only how bad the overall electrical infrastructure is, said Township Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Coordinator Bobbi Jo Murphy, but also how sorely Pequannock lacked generators of sufficient strength at its critical buildings; after three days, the ones the town had were burning out.

"They’re not designed to run for two weeks at a clip," Hollberg said. "We ended up shutting all the lights off, shutting all the computers off, the police desk was running at the bare minimum…that’s no way to operate during an emergency. We should be able to continue our operation and function as ‘government’ in an emergency."

As a result, the township is now seeking funding from the federal Sandy aid declaration to purchase nine new generators of varying strengths to power everything from its water wells and pump stations to Town Hall itself at a cost of just over $960,000. For FEMA to fund the purchase, however, they must be diesel units; in what sounds like a failure in logic, the governmental agency has declared natural gas to be an "interruptible fuel source" because of the threat of ruptured gas lines during earthquakes.

It’s not exactly what they want, but Pequannock isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"If diesel is what they want and they’ll pay for it, then that’s what we’ll get," said Hollberg. 

"But if the feds don’t fund it…over the course of the next 10 years, this needs to be a priority."

One thing that functioned very well during the emergency, said Murphy, was the town’s communications — even though the back-and-forth with power utility JCP&L went notoriously bad, the town’s interactions with its departments and residents weren’t.

"We said from the start that this would be a crisis of communication, and that’s what it was," she said. "The AM radio station was a godsend, because phone lines went out, computers went out, but the all of our updates were on the radio…it ended up being a saving grace for us."

One call Hollberg would make earlier if he had to do it again was the decision to pull the EMS off the streets, he said. Many local departments heard the calls from Wayne, where an officer was critically injured in Packanack Lake when a tree fell on his cruiser, and the manager said Pequannock should have ordered its people back sooner.

"That’s a tough call to make, to tell people ‘Don’t respond anymore. Stop doing what you’re trained and paid to do,’" he said. "But we all probably should have made that call about a half-hour earlier."

‘It wasn’t really on the radar’

The situation was similar, if less dire, in neighboring Riverdale, which sits just north of Pequannock but, at 2 square miles, is much smaller and, with 3,500 residents, has less than one-third of the population.

Fire Chief and OEM Coordinator Dan Sturm said that although the town had prepared for wind, fires, and heavy rains, no one could have predicted the mass outage that lasted from between three and 11 days, depending on the neighborhood.

"It wasn’t really on the radar. We knew we were going to lose it in some parts of town, but we didn’t think we’d lose it for that long of a period," he said.

Because Riverdale’s lights came back on sooner, the gas shortage did not reach the straits it did in Pequannock — plus, Sturm said, arrangements were made with multiple local stations to assure that a portion of each delivery be put aside for the municipal vehicles, meaning that there was a reserve of about 2,000–3,000 gallons.

"We didn’t see that coming….we had no warning of a fuel shortage," he said.

The borough’s DPW and emergency responders fared well with supplies of material, however, although new generators for the Riverdale Police Department, water system, and the Loy Avenue community center are in the works. If they only receive FEMA funding for diesel units, Sturm said, conversion kits allowing for multiple fueling options will be installed.

In the future, he said, fuel stockpiles will be built up in advance of storms.

Sandy, he said, has made local officials realize that the purchase of critical backup systems can no longer be put off with promises of future funding.

"I think (Sandy) opened everybody’s eyes that we really need to be prepared… We’re at that point where we have to move forward with it. No more waiting," he said.

The borough is also reinstating its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a program that trains volunteers in disaster preparedness and imparts upon them basic disaster response skills such as fire safety, light search and rescue, and medical operations.

Twenty-three members have already been recruited, he said, and will soon be able to perform tasks like man shelters and do door-to-door notifications, thus freeing up firefighters and other EMS personnel to do the work they need to do.

"It’s just a manpower resource that we could use a lot," he said.

Pompton Lakes, which has been through several catastrophic floods in the past five years, coped with the storm well, said OEM Coordinator Al Evangelista — just 2.5 inches of rain fell on Pompton Lake, which had been lowered beforehand.

With the municipal vehicles fueling up at the county depot on Ringwood Avenue, the gas shortage was not a concern, and the regular Pompton residents’ experience with weather disasters went a long way toward assuring that things went smoothly.

"We’ve got a little bit of practice (with disasters)," Evangelista said, "and the response of our community to our reverse 911 calls really, really paid off. We kept (residents) in the loop as we went along."

Also, the borough’s Shade Tree Commission has been active in cutting down old, decaying trees that stood along the public right-of-way, which meant that fewer trees fell on power lines. As a result, the better part of the town did not lose power, he said.

‘Very little’ to be done

Even with its expansive amount of land (80 square miles) and its larger population of 26,000, West Milford seems to have experienced fewer problems than its down-mountain neighbors. According to Deputy Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Ronald Svrchek, the township’s issues stemmed from things that were out of its control, such as the battle to get power restored by its utilities.

Otherwise, the township OEM fared well, said Svrchek.

"We went through our Emergency Operations Plan, we had the appropriate staffing…we’d spent the better part of a week preparing," he said.

West Milford’s municipal fuel depots were kept topped off, he said, and although power was down for between 10–14 days in various spots, generators were maintained, and wear and tear was not excessive due to preventative maintenance performed by the DPW. However, he wants capital upgrades, such as the purchase of new generators and DPW equipment in the future, and an increase in staffing as well.

"It comes down to one word: preparation. You can’t run a 20-year-old bucket loader being held together by rust, and replacing equipment is what you’re supposed to do," he said. "But with a frozen tax base and no building available in this town, we’re strapped. We do the best we can, and we try to be prepared, but we’re at the northern tip (of the county) here."

And in the end, when it comes to disasters like Sandy, he said, there’s "very little" that can be done.

"You can prepare all you want but you’re never going to be prepared." he said. "We’ll continue to prepare…you have to anticipate the worst."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/191631601_Local_towns_reflect_on_what_they_learned_after_Hurricane_Sandy.html?page=all

An Epicurean lesson courtesy of a hard year

FRIDAY JANUARY 11, 2013, 11:15 AM

BY  STEVE JANOSKI

"This is a year we'll never forget."

Every December, someone inevitably says this, but rarely is it true. 2012, though... this one might deserve it. Especially in New Jersey.

It started inauspiciously enough, I guess; no great, snowy winter, no wildly rainy spring to raise the floodwaters. All was serene, quiet.

It was summer's heat, though, that felt as if it brought the madness: the Aurora shootings, the burning of the Libyan embassy, the never-ending talk of economic collapse and a second recession. Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent blackouts. The absolutely brutal presidential campaign.

Then, as if that was not enough, there was the final blow: the bloody massacre at a Newtown elementary school that is still so difficult to comprehend, so horrifying, that no possible combination of adjectives can do it justice.

I will say it frankly: I have seen enough of this year. By far. And even though I do a moderate job at coping with it - mostly by writing this column - 2012 has proved as unnerving to me as it has to anyone else. Sometimes I too wonder if the world is going mad, or why so often the bad news seems to outweighs the good.

But even in this year that was blanketed in the worst that humanity had to shovel, there were moments of awe that proved we are still (I think) moving forward as a whole. Thank science for this.

The Mars Lander, appropriately named "Curiosity," landed on an alien planet and sent back information every day about a world that human eyes will one day look on firsthand. The Large Hadron Collider in Europe continued to amaze and performed test after test to slowly unlock the mysteries of the subatomic world and further blur the line where science and philosophy meet.

And in late October, a former Austrian paratrooper amazed the world by making a 24-mile freefall that proved that the human spirit is every bit as present (and important) as our intellect.

Then, of course, there were the smaller, more personal epiphanies that many of us came upon as a result of 2012's hardships. I learned that a world without electricity is not all that daunting (and not wholly unattractive) and that candlelight casts a far more gorgeous glow than an LED ever could. I remembered how dark the night actually gets and that nature not only does not really give a damn about us, but also has quite a bit more power than I recalled.

I learned that I need to get away from technology and Twitter and Facebook and phones, even though I love them, in order to quiet my own mind.

Now, as our calendars flip to 2013, let us not make the ridiculous resolutions that we won't keep or the promises to do that which we will never do; after last year, that should seem trivial and stupid.

Instead, let us pause just once to appreciate what is around us, whatever that may be - our youth and our strength, our age and accomplishments, our knowledge or wisdom. Just today, while things are still calm, because our lives so often end "en media res."

"Dum vivimus, vivamus," as the saying goes - "while we live, let us live."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/186260272_An_Epicurean_lesson_courtesy_of_a_hard_year.html

New Jersey's reason to believe

It was long after midnight that I came upon him, sitting in the dunes of the Seaside Heights beach, wearing the flannel jacket I’d let him borrow some time during the infamous occasion known to high school seniors as "prom weekend."

He was (and is) one of my closest friends, and we had gone down the Shore to celebrate the ultimate mile-marker of freedom that was graduation.

As expected, the three-day party had gotten way out of hand, and ironically both of us had sought quiet respite by the ocean for that final night. Although I can’t remember what we talked about, we lingered on that sand for hours, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and staring out at the surf that lends a raucous soundtrack to every minute of every day down there.

Ten years later, in the wake of the most ferocious storm in state history, Governor Christie said it best: that Shore of our youth, with the memories of so many lazy days and long, wild New Jersey nights, is now gone.

The boardwalk has been annihilated, the amusement-park rides lay in cold, watery ruin, and the dancing carnival lights have been extinguished.

It didn't stop there, of course. The destruction isn’t limited to that lovely stretch of coastline, and even those of us who have sat on mile-long gas lines only to return to homes that lack heat, electricity, water, or phones are lucky when compared with those whose houses were destroyed by the thousands of trees felled by Sandy’s wrath.

Bad though it may be, the shock is wearing off. It’s time to remember that all is not lost and that the comments from individuals hinting that although the Shore will be rebuilt, it "will never be the same," simply have no place here.

We must remember, always remember, that we are from New Jersey. Yes, we may be bloodied and bruised, but then again, we’re used to that. We live in the shadow of the most spectacular city on earth, and we are the eternal pariahs because of it. While New York has always sparkled and gleamed, we grew up in that dark jungleland across the river filled with the outcasts and broken heroes.

Our rough-and-tumble cities, lying under highways and lit by flickering street lights, are ridiculed, our accents are (inaccurately) mocked, and the ever-unfunny "What exit?" joke is constantly uttered by the lips of the idiotic, but still we endure, because all those years of abuse have infused in us a distinctive fighting spirit that lets us face down any challenge, great or small, all the while saying with bared teeth, "Go ahead. Try it."

Yeah, we know that the Shore was never the cleanest, or nicest, or most refined set of beaches in the country, but then we’ve never been the cleanest, nicest, or most refined set of people.

We’ve had that chip on our shoulder since the start, and our darlings, from Jim Braddock and Frank Sinatra to Bruce Willis and The Boss, have always been the underdogs, the mavericks, the ones who were never supposed to win but did anyway — and did it with style.

There are few states as mangled, but as tenacious and gritty, as New Jersey, and few places whose citizens will never stop the fight even when it seems the bleeding just won’t stop.

Make no mistake: we will need to muster every bit of that grit, every drop of resolve, to recover from this, but we must remember who we are and where we come from. Although our homes may be buried under sand and trees and water, we will get up off the pavement once again, as we always have, in spite of the world’s best efforts to lay us low.

Long ago, while facing a different sort of calamity, Winston Churchill famously said, "If you’re going through hell, keep going." Seventy years later, and it doesn’t matter whether that hell is standing alone against the perpetual darkness of fascism, or rebuilding your shattered life in the wake of a natural disaster, we must keep going.

There is no question that we will rebuild, or that New Jersey, like Great Britain, will prove that the most desperate moments in our hardscrabble lives often lead to our finest hours and greatest triumphs.

We will be back. We will be better. And you can count on it.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/177802661_New_Jersey_s_reason_to_believe.html

Pequannock officials, residents angry over slow-moving utility

By Steve Janoski

Local officials are running out of phrases to describe their frustration with Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) as 10 days removed from Hurricane Sandy, just under half of Pequannock remains without power.

On Tuesday, Mayor Rich Phelan said that about 44 percent of the township has no electricity — according to JCP&L's website, that equates to about 1,965 customers — and residents' patience has run out, especially because they're not seeing utility trucks working in the streets.

Weary, frustrated citizens have been calling, said Phelan, but he is no longer sure what to say.

"We don't have a magic number that we call JCP&L on; it's the same phone number that everybody else has," he said. "It breaks my heart to tell them that there's nothing I can tell (the residents)…there's absolutely nothing."

Although he's participated in several conference calls with the JCP&L officials, he called them "a joke," and berated the utility for offering information that has "absolutely no local connection" to what is going on in the streets.

"I don't want to hear how many linemen you have in the State of New Jersey — I want to hear when you're going to get to Sunset (Road), when you're going to get to Jackson (Avenue)," he said. "This has just gotten ridiculous, beyond ridiculous, and there's no information, there's nothing."

He was told that there would be another 1,200 homes restored by Tuesday night, but said that not one had been brought on-line.

JCP&L spokesman Mark Nitowski said that with 51,000 customers still out of power, Morris County is "one of the hardest hit" of the utility's service areas, and that a large amount of tree damage was to blame. And, although he said that the utility has brought power back to about 944,000 of its 1.2 million customers in NJ, that statistic likely provides little solace to those sleeping in the cold, dark houses in places like the Village.

There was nothing in particular about Pequannock that was slowing down the restoration process, he said, but unfortunately, "no matter what storm hits, there's always going to be the one area, the one individual customer…that are the last ones to be restored, and they're going to be frustrated and upset."

However, he still could not offer information about the township, such as what streets will get electricity first or when, and said only that the utility is planning to have "the vast majority" of its customers restored by Wednesday night.

"We appreciate the continued patience…it's just a process to get to that point," he said.

When the outage ends, Phelan said, he's going to be pressing for changes in the way the township deals with the utility. He suggested Morris County municipalities withhold payments to JCP&L to force it to recognize their anger over the affair.

He also wants a point of contact that town officials can call for specific information about their region, and wants a better understanding of the power grid as a whole.

"We're going to actively go after this," he said.

Nitowski said that there is an area manager that handles the region, but Phelan remarked that the rep had offered no local information, only the same responses that the power company as a whole was offering.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/177803071_Pequannock_officials__residents_angry_over_slow-moving_utility.html

Pequannock struggles through week without power

By Steve Janoski


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

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Proposed Frankenstorm creates fears of flooding, high winds

By Steve Janoski

As Hurricane Sandy rages up the Atlantic seaboard in what looks like yet another October surprise for North Jersey, the promise of heavy rains, high winds, and the possibility of heavy flooding has local officials activating their emergency management offices, ramping up their preparations, and bracing for the worst.

The great fear, Pequannock Township Manager Dave Hollberg said on Thursday afternoon, is that a separate west-bound storm will collide with the hurricane as it arrives, drawing it into the continent and feeding off its energy to create a massive low-pressure system that would rival 1991's now-infamous "Perfect Storm."

That gale, which led to the 1997 Sebastian Junger book (and later movie) of the same name, occurred when a nor'easter absorbed Hurricane Grace to create a wildly violent disturbance over the North Atlantic that led to waves of unprecedented heights and later evolved into another, smaller hurricane.

But that storm, which was never officially named, didn't make landfall until it was significantly weakened. And for flood-prone towns like Pequannock and Pompton Lakes, exactly where Sandy arrives will play a direct role in how much the waters of the Pompton and Pequannock rivers rise.

"Our biggest concern is that... those two storms could potentially come together and become basically a nor'easter that taps into a large amount of tropical moisture and produces copious amounts of rain over a very short period of time," Hollberg said.

With many residents of low-lying areas still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene in August 2011, further flooding of that magnitude could be ruinous.

However, as of Friday afternoon, it was still too early to determine the storm's course, said David A. Robinson, the state climatologist and professor at Rutgers University. This is because a 50- or 100-mile shift in where the eye comes ashore could mean the difference between 3 inches of rain and 10 for the Passaic River Basin.

The situation looked better on Friday than it did on Thursday, he said - instead of making landfall near Asbury Park as previously predicted, Friday's models said that it was more likely to hit the Delmarva Peninsula, sparing North Jersey the brunt of the precipitation.

This, said Pequannock Mayor Rich Phelan, will make a tremendous difference, especially considering that the reservoirs, which are about three-quarters full, can contain 4 to 5 inches of rainfall, but will be swamped if the totals careen higher.

"If we get 3 or 4 inches...we'll be OK," he said Friday. "But if we get 10, that will be catastrophic."

And don't be fooled by the "Frankenstorm" sobriquet, Robinson said. This is very much a hurricane, and regardless of where it lands it will be a "significant event" that is coming for an extended stay. A high-pressure system sitting to the northeast combined with the other westbound storm will leave Sandy with no immediate outlet.

"It's very unusual," he said. "It's going to be a prolonged period of rain, very strong rains, and you'll have strong winds affecting the Passaic River Basin, which could result in stream flooding and tree damage...no one should let their guard down."

Robinson expects the first inklings of the storm to be felt on Sunday before it ramps up on Monday. The bulk of the hurricane is likely to arrive Tuesday.

Officials are urging residents to sign up now for email blasts through Pequannock's website (peqtwp.org), pay attention to local weather forecasts, and listen to the town-run radio station, AM 1620, for updates as the weather intensifies.

Hollberg also said that a letter has been sent off to Governor Christie urgently requesting that the reservoirs be drawn down (as they were prior to Irene), and that the gates of the Pompton Lakes Dam be "gradually opened" and remain open throughout the event.

Pompton Lakes officials have echoed the request, and at an Oct. 25 meeting of the Pompton Lakes Flood Advisory Board, Pompton Lakes Mayor Katie Cole told worried residents of the South End that she had called the Governor's Office to ask that the gates be opened and that an engineer from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) be present to monitor operations.

She spoke about how she believes that the status of the local reservoirs, especially those that drain into the Ramapo River, will determine how badly the community floods, and urged residents to read the blue flood manual in the borough calendar and sign up for the reverse 911 system by calling the borough clerk (973-835-0143) or registering online.

In Pequannock, Phelan said that town workers have already put barricades out near oft-flooded roads, and electronic trailers are sitting on the highway, ready to be activated the second Route 23 begins to take on water. With the town facing what could be the sixth major flood in three years, the township has "gotten this down to a science."

Should the power go out, plans are in place to conduct manual door-to-door notifications if evacuations become necessary.

"It's sad that we're getting really good at this, but we've got a great town, and I know our residents will rise to the challenge," said the mayor.

But they also need to be ready to leave. Just in case.

To contact the governor's office to ask that the Pompton Lake Dam be opened, call 609-292-6000. To contact the DEP to request an engineer be in Pompton Lakes to monitor the flood gates, call the DEP Dam Safety Department at 609-984-9859.

Staff writer Leslie Scott contributed to this story

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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