More than a hundred people showed up at the first of three planned Board of Public Utilities public hearings on how Jersey's public utilities responded after Superstorm Sandy.

JCP+L President Don Lynch listens during Board of Public Utilities public hearing on utility response to superstorm Sandy
JCP+L President Don Lynch listens during Board of Public Utilities public hearing on utility response to superstorm Sandy (David Matthau, Townsquare Media NJ)
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BPU President Don Lynch sat quietly and took notes, as almost everyone criticized the JCP&L response to the hurricane, bringing up the same points that were mentioned last year, after Hurricane Irene and the October snow storm.

One resident who spoke at the hearing said, "The tone starts at the top - as the CEO, you should be embarrassed by the responsiveness of the communications."

Another man said the quality and the quantity of the frequency of information was dreadful.

Minutes later, a woman said, "The issue is communications - 90 percent of the people I talked to said the issue was communications…I think we really need to think about our customers - your customers - that are screaming for better communications."

A few minutes later, a man said, "I saw school children stepping over downed wires to get on a school bus - and it's not as if JCP&L didn't know those downed wire were there - we called them for 10 straight days to tell them that, and there was just on action… JCP & L has to answer for all the things they didn't do, and all the BS that they put out there - I think it's a shame."

Board of Public Utilities public hearing on utility response to superstorm Sandy
(David Matthau, Townsquare Media NJ)
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One woman said days after the storm, when her power was still off, all she could think of was, "Where are they? What are they doing? Where is the action? I don't think people need more communications, I think people need to see action ..I felt like Basking Ridge was a third world country - everywhere I drove, you couldn't get from point A to point B because there were trees down ..it's very easy to cover the problems that JCP & L had, by saying everybody had problem - yeah everybody had problems, you guys were the worst."

Another hearing will take place next week.

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