Community Corner

UPDATE: JCP&L Restores All Power to New Providence Residents

Hern said he received confirmation on Sunday.

Hurricane Irene ripped through the area last Sunday, causing numerous New Providence residents to lose power for several days.

But on Sunday, Mayor J. Brooke Hern said JCP&L informed him that all power has been restored to borough households.

“As far as JCP&L has reported to me, all power has been restored,” he said. “I haven’t heard any further concerns raised from residents without power so I think that information is accurate. However, some information I’ve gotten from JCP&L hasn’t been accurate.”

Find out what's happening in New Providence-Berkeley Heightswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Hern said he had a discussion on Friday afternoon with Mayors of surrounding communities, JCP&L President Donald Lynch, Sen. Tom Kean, Assemblyman Jon Bramnick and Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz, about the power outages following Hurricane Irene.

“I, along with the other Mayors, shared our deep concerns not only with the level of preparedness, or lack thereof, on the part of JCP&L for weathering the hurricane, but also for the lack of communication,” Hern said. “I made it very clear that the residents of New Providence, their customers, and I thought they had dropped the ball on both those issues in terms of being prepared and in terms of communicating.”

Find out what's happening in New Providence-Berkeley Heightswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As a result of that discussion, Hern said Lynch provided him and the other Mayors with direct contacts to JCP&L so that they have a number to call whenever there are power outages.

“Whenever there’s an issue, we can get immediate information on what is going on in New Providence,” he said.

Also during that discussion with Lynch, Hern said he raised further issue with inaccurate information he received from JCP&L following Hurricane Irene.

“Not only were we not getting information, when we did get information, it was largely inaccurate and it seems that they hopefully have remedied at least that problem,” Hern said. “I was getting updates at 2 a.m. on Saturday about the progress in New Providence so JCP&L made an effort to at least communicate with me about what’s happening. It would have been better obviously if they had done that from day one. But coming into a week after the storm, it seems like they are making some sort of an effort.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from New Providence-Berkeley Heights