By Philip Sean Curran
Nearly half of Monmouth County lost power when a storm bringing rain and high winds of more than 70 mph blew through the region July 22, the worst widespread power outage in the county since Super Storm Sandy hit almost seven years ago.
Scenes of downed trees, tree limbs and power lines were common in a county where 138,000 customers of utility Jersey Central Power & Light were without power. In the southern parts of Monmouth entire towns, like Howell and Spring Lake, went dark.
“At the height of it, we had half the county without power,” Sheriff Shaun Golden said. “This is the most significant power event since Super Storm Sandy.”
The county’s Office of Emergency Management falls under Golden’s office. He said the hardest hit communities, in terms of most damage and customers without power, were Millstone, Upper Freehold, Freehold Township, Wall, Howell, Neptune, Belmar, Sea Girt and the Spring Lake area.
In addition, there were 24 county roads closed and more than 100 municipal and state roads closed, including main arteries like routes 35 and 36, which made travel difficult.
“I want to commend all of our first responders for working tirelessly throughout our communities since (the) devastating storm,” Thomas A. Arnone, freeholder director, wrote July 23 on Twitter.
Crews from JCP&L were working to restore power as outage totals were being updated. As of 10 a.m. July 24, the utility said there were 30,499 customers in Monmouth without power. Overall, nearly 44,000 of its customers in the state were still without power.
JCP&L spokesman Cliff Cole said the majority of its customers in the hardest hit areas would have power by 11:30 p.m. July 26.
The utility has said it has 1,100 linemen, hazard responders, forestry personnel and contractors working to bring back power to its customers in Monmouth and other parts of the state. In addition, about 925 line workers and hazard responders from its parent company FirstEnergy, and from contractors, either have arrived or will be in New Jersey to assist.
“We do have the manpower out to make these repairs,” Cole said.
No one was seriously injured as a direct result of the storm, but in Neptune Township a 17-year-old boy was killed July 22 in a fire at his home, which had lost power, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office said. The cause of the blaze was being investigated, authorities said.
The storm, coming on the heels of a weekend heat wave, wreaked havoc beyond Monmouth, including Ocean, Burlington and Middlesex counties. In all, the state had more than 325,000 power outages, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities said.
“In some places it was the heavy rain that was worse and in some places it was the strong winds,” said Joe Miketta, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly. “So it was a bad event for everybody.”
Rain totals for Monmouth were estimated at anywhere from 2 to 3 inches, he said.
Power outage impacts in the county varied by community based on the track of the brief storm. In Monmouth Beach, Mayor Sue Howard said about 20 JCP&L customers lost power. But the total was higher in Middletown, where at its height, outages numbered more than 10,000 customers or a little less than half the entire community, said township administrator
Anthony P. Mercantante. “There’s just so much tree damage still,” he said. Cleaning up branches and wires is at the top of the to-do list. “The priority No. 1 is to take care of any live wires that might be a risk to somebody.”
“If you drive around town, like any town, you’ll (see) a lot of downed tree limbs and brush,” said Fair Haven borough administrator Theresa S. Casagrande. “And we will be sending crews through to help our residents clean up after the storm.”
She said a tree fell on the roof of a house on Buttonwood Drive, but no one was hurt.
Over in Little Silver, flooding was not so much the issue, “just power outages and downed trees,” municipal administrator Kimberly Jungfer said.
The story was similar in Shrewsbury. Mayor Erik Anderson said Tuesday about 850 customers of JCP&L in his town were without power.
“We’re slowly getting power back,” he said.
David A. Henry, the health officer for the Monmouth County Regional Health Commission, said inspectors from his office will be traveling through the 20 towns the commission covers “to see if there are any food establishments open and see if they’re having any problems with refrigeration.”
“So our focus would be on food sanitation,” he said. “Because if you have restaurants that didn’t have power for over eight hours, some of that food is going to have to be disposed of.”
In the nearly seven years since Sandy, state officials and others have talked of the need to increase resiliency in the anticipation of future severe weather events. But this week’s storm, lasting only a short time, caused widespread outages across Monmouth, an area that Sandy hit hard.
Officials, asked if the state is in any better shape than before Sandy hit, pointed to the issue of having trees in proximity to power lines.
“I would guarantee you that all the outages we have are caused by homeowners’ trees falling on power lines,” state Assemblyman Eric Houghtaling (D-11) said. “And a lot of that, the utility can’t control.”
He said that in Neptune Township, where he lives, a large oak tree planted between the street and the sidewalk fell onto a car and brought down a power line, pulling down all the lines on the block.
State Sen. Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr. (R-13) said the storm should “have us refocus on our tree maintenance.” He also felt that JCP&L needed to answer whether it had enough crews from outside the area ready to respond to the storm ahead of time.
“The severity of this was predicted a couple of days out,” he said. “So we’re going to have to ask that question.”
“Each storm has variables that you have to take into account,” Cole said. “For example, this one came with storms that had wind gusts, at certain cases, over 70 miles per hour and the extreme flooding. So again, we are ready for that kind of instance.”
Mercantante said that post-Sandy, JCP&L’s ability to communicate with people and keep them informed has improved dramatically.
“But the one thing you can’t change,” he said, “is trees hitting wires. There’s really no protection against that, other than putting wires underground. And we all know that that’s been discussed for decades and the cost of that is extreme and, really, nobody wants to pay for it.”
