Power is still out in thousands of homes in South Jersey with communities west of Atlantic City and near Bridgeton hardest hit. Homeowners and utility companies are now in recovery mode. More than 130 PSE&G utility workers are battling the heat to help get lights and air conditioners working again.
“To be honest with you I don’t think anyone really counted on something like this coming through. It was a big surprise,” said PSE&G Supervisor Gary Bennett. “This was just an emergency that happened in the middle of the night and unfortunately for Atlantic City they had to start calling first thing Saturday morning to get additional help.”
PSE&G workers that typically cover Hudson and Essex counties started working 16-hour shifts in Atlantic County after the storm hit. Bennett says power was restored to 40,000 homes yesterday.
“We have the tree trimmers come in first. They’ve got to remove all the trees and take everything off the poles. If they’re broken, we come in and replace them and then basically we start rebuilding,” Bennett said. “We put all new wire up and put everything that’s on the ground back up in the air and start checking services and stuff to the houses and install new transformers if needed.”
Just around the block from the power restoration work, residents still struggle in this extreme heat to repair damages from the storm.
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“We’re just making do. Actually it wasn’t so bad last night in terms of sleeping, downstairs. They all have basements so they’ve been sleeping in the basements and it’s much cooler that way,” said Mike Schuster of Northfield who was on vacation when the storm hit. He got home yesterday to find fallen trees and no power in his house. All the neighbors on his cul-de-sac are also without power.
Schuster bought a generator in Pennsylvania because he didn’t expect to find one closer to home. He got his generator running last night, but he and his family still have no air conditioning and they lost everything in their refrigerator. He wonders when his power will be restored.
“It’s a slow process,” Bennett said. “We’re doing it as quick as we can just like every other utility, and they have to understand somebody’s going to be first, somebody’s going to be last.”
Bennett says the challenge isn’t only to restore power quickly but to keep his team and residents safe.
“The homeowners trying to clean up in their yard and doing tree work and everything around their yards, they have to be very careful,” Bennett said. “If they see any wires that are tangled up into the trees where they’re trying to clear up, they should leave it alone and step away until one of us come in and make sure that it’s dead.”
Atlantic City Electric told NJ Today that is still expects power to be restored for many customers by tomorrow. That’s something Schuster is hoping for or else he says tomorrow will feel like anything but a holiday.
Lauren Wanko reports from Northfield.