TRENTON — JCP&L and Atlantic City Electric crews are working to restore power lost following the fourth nor'easter of the month.

As of 11:25 a.m., nearly 81,000 JCP&L, PSE&G and Atlantic City Electric customers were without power

  • JCP&L: 26,062 (mostly Burlington, Monmouth and Ocean Counties, specifically in Barnegat, Berkeley Township, Jackson and Manchester)
  • PSE&G: 4,918 (mostly in Jersey City and North Bergen in Hudson County)
  • Atlantic City Electric:49,993 (mostly in Atlantic, Burlington, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties)

JCP&L's customers were in an area where a band of heavy snow lingered from  late  Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, according to spokesman Ron Morano.

"What we're seeing is trees that have fallen and damaged our equipment including our poles and wires. We've got a number of crews responding and the resources available in this area because we have that staging site we set up prior to the storm at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson," Morano said.

The conditions were similar to what crews faced in North Jersey during the first two nor'easters of the month, where trees fell onto wires, according to Morano.

"Many of the trees that fall are trees that are not in our right-of-way area where we are responsible for cutting and trimming back," Morano said. Once the utility's equipment is damaged, a clearing crew has to go out, remove the tree and make conditions safe for restoration.

Morano did not know when all power would be back online.

Atlantic City Electric customers began to lose power by the thousands on Wednesday afternoon, while JCP&L and PSE&G had relatively low outage numbers.

"Atlantic City Electric’s entire Emergency Response Organization was mobilized with all company resources dedicated to restoring service to customers as safely and efficiently as possible," according to spokesman Frank Tedesco.

Tedesco said the western part of the company's service areas in Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem counties were the hardest hit.

In addition to 180 internal linemen, ACE has an additional 131 overhead line contractors and 233 tree crew personnel working to restore service to the affected customers and an additional 240 resources brought in from Atlantic City Electric’s sister utilities in Illinois, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Washington.

He expected power to be restored by tonight and said the utility is working on providing more specific times.

PSE&G had only a scattering of customers out during the nor'easter and was sending crews to help ACE

All the utilities caution against touching fallen wires.

"Assume any live wire is energized," Tedesco said, and asked customers to report any downed wires.

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