Less than 20 percent remain without power in the Lehigh Valley but almost half of Warren and Hunterdon county residents still don't have electricity restored following Superstorm Sandy.
Workers from Progress Energy in North Carolina attempt to fix power lines at Monroe Ave. and Brodhead St. at College Hill in Easton today.
Michael Lynch has spent the last four nights cramped in a one-bedroom apartment with five other people.
Without electricity at his Palmer Township house for almost a week now, he and his family have been seeking refuge at his stepdaughter’s apartment in Whitehall.
“It’s too cold and there’s the boredom of sitting in a dark room,” he said. “You hate to whine because everyone is in the same boat, but it would seem to me at this point they should at least have a schedule — there aren’t that many people left.”
In the Lehigh Valley especially, Lynch is among a small minority of residents still without power following Superstorm Sandy.
All but 18 percent of Met-Ed customers in Northampton County had electricity as of 8 tonight. PPL’s numbers were even better — less than 11 percent of customers in Lehigh County and less than 6 percent of customers in Northampton County were without power.
PPL was hoping to have just about everyone’s power back by Sunday night, spokesman Bryan Hay said. As the company gets to the end of restorations, progress is slower, as some repairs only bring back a handful of customers, Hay said.
Met-Ed is doing better than expected with its restorations and expected to have 95 percent of customers back online tonight, spokesman Scott Surgeoner said.
That should be welcome news for Lynch and fellow Met-Ed customer Barbara Merring in Williams Township. She said she was frustrated that Met-Ed couldn’t give her a firm estimate of when her power would be restored and a reason why it was taking so long.
“They couldn’t tell me what the source of the trouble is,” she said today. “This is getting a little old.”
Most of the remaining Met-Ed outages are in places with severe storm damage, Surgeoner said. Lynch said there is a large tree that took down a lot of power lines in his neighborhood of Old Orchard while Merring said she lives in a rural section of Williams Township that is prone to power outages.
Greenwich Township resident Debbie Iorio also is in the minority of Warren County residents, though less so, as 43 percent of them are still without power, according to JCP&L. Hunterdon County also still has 43 percent of residents without power.
Iorio says she’s been told she won’t have power until Wednesday.
“We sent men to the moon. We should be able to get electricity in five days, not eight,” she said.
Her family of four has been camping out in their living room, where they have a fireplace. They also have to worry about having enough water to drink and flush the toilet, as they have a well.
“We’re all spent at this point,” Iorio said. “We need a break.”
JCP&L, which is dealing with widespread outages throughout northern New Jersey, isn’t giving out more specific restoration timelines than by Wednesday for the majority of customers, spokesman Ron Morano said.
The company has repaired most of its larger facilities, such as substations and transmission lines, and can now move on to individual streets, he said.
“If we don’t fix the big stuff, it won’t work if we fix the individual lines,” he said.