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CLIFFVIEW PILOT photos by Mary K. Miraglia
What Kathleen Fitzgerald said she hoped to convey is that there are “a lot of steps from the beginning of the process of electricity” before you can flip a switch, and that damage in most areas has occurred at each step.
That said, roughly 692,000 PSE&G customers statewide remained without power today, after more than a million were restored. Less than a third of them are in Bergen County — as in: about 193,000.
Rockland Orange Electric says 36,000 of its customers remain affected as of this afternoon– many of them in Bergen. It might actually not be before Nov. 11 that power returns to thousands of them.
“Our utilities need to move,” one local Bergen County official said. Pipes could start bursting if we have two or three days of cold.”
PSE&G’s pledge for full restoration is next Friday, “but we are very hopeful that the majority will have power long before that,” Fitzgerald said.
Police are asking people to use common sense as that process proceeds:
- Downed power lines will spark as the grid is recharged, while others can still come down. So STOP moving cones. “Barricades are there for a reason,” New Milford Police Chief Frank Papapietro said. “Don’t go around them.”
- And STOP tearing down police tape;
- “Don’t call local PD to ask when electric service will return,” Papapietro said. “We don’t know.” Besides, it’s the utility’s job to tell you.
Fitzgerald today tried to do that.
“One of the biggest issues in the storm was the flooding,” she said. “We had contiguous flooding from the Hudson, Passaic and Raritan rivers,” which affected several substations.
Workers have had to clean out the substations, “in some cases with toothbrushes and rags,” she said.
“Getting those substations up and running could help restore 25,000 customers at a time,” Fitzgerald said.
Restoring the individual grids are just one step in the process, however.
Electricity “starts at the power plant and goes through lines. Most of those lines have been restored,” she said. “Then it goes into the substation before going to homes and businesses.”
And that’s where further trouble lies. Downed lines along yours or other streets have to be repaired. Trees must be cleared.
The first priority has been the hospitals. Just about all have been restored, Fitzgerald said.
Then it’s police and fire departments.
Then it’s “where we can impact the largest numbers of customers more quickly,” she said.
After restoring Newark’s power in three days, crews are working to get Jersey City up and running, Fitzgerald said.
“This is painstaking, labor-intensive work,” Fitzgerald said.
ABOVE: CLIFFVIEW PILOT photo by Mary K. Miraglia
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