JCP&L is warning damage in the state exceeds both Tropical Storm Irene and last Halloween’s snowstorm so restoration will take longer than prior storms. Flooding along with downed trees and branches mean many roads are impassable.
Most Met-Ed customers should have power restored by the weekend but things aren't looking as good for Jersey Central Power & Light customers.
Parent company First Energy Corp. reports that the majority of JCP&L customers will have power restored within the next seven days. But customers in the hardest hit areas will be restored in an additional seven days.
Met-Ed expects that 95 percent of customers will have power restored by this weekend while the remainder will have power back through early next week, said Mike Doran, Met-Ed’s regional president, in a news release.
JCP&L is warning damage in the state exceeds both Tropical Storm Irene and last Halloween’s snowstorm so restoration will take longer than prior storms. Flooding along with downed trees and branches mean many roads are impassable.
About 20 percent of JCP&L’s 1.1 million customers have had their power restored leaving about 940,000 customers still in the dark.
“While we were better prepared for Hurricane Sandy, the damage rivals that experienced during Hurricane Katrina, one of our nation's most devastating and expensive hurricanes,” says Don Lynch, president of JCP&L. “In preparing for Hurricane Sandy, we positioned 1,600 line crews and 1,200 forestry professionals prior to the storm even making landfall."
First Energy has started to post estimated restoration times for regions as they become available but the Lehigh Valley has not yet been included.
In Hunterdon County, 78 percent, or 47,458 of JCP&L’s customers still have an outage while over in Warren County 35,604 customers, or 70 percent, still have no power.
Met-Ed has restored service to 138,000 customers while 130,000 are still without power. Restoration efforts have been hampered by downed trees, branches and impassable roads.
The company reports the counties of its service area that have been most affected include Berks, Northampton, Monroe, Pike and Lehigh.
Met-Ed’s sliver of customers in Lehigh have gotten no relief. All 4,054 of them are still without power while over in Northampton 42,675, or about 66 percent, customers still have no electricity.
Met-Ed’s almost wrapped up restoration in the York area so it plans to relocate its staging site that was set up at the York Fairgrounds to the Nazareth area to support restoration work in the Easton, Stroudsburg, and Pocono areas.