By Kevin Coughlin
Nearly 8,000 customers in Greater Morristown remain without power as of 6 pm on Saturday, July 30, 2016, after a violent afternoon storm knocked down trees and utility poles across the area.
Morristown police asked people to stay off the roads–Western and Mount Kemble avenues were closed, and downed wires were reported on Farragut Place. Even as power is being restored, Mayor Tim Dougherty said it’s wise to stay put.
“If you don’t have to travel, just relax and get some rest,” he advised.
Anyone without power should notify JCP&L at 888-544-4877, said Christy Hajoway,
a spokeswoman for Jersey Central Power & Light.
No injuries were reported. But Hajoway said some 3,500 customers remain without power in Morris Township.
“This is just crazy stuff,” said Township Mayor Dan Caffrey. The Collinsville section appears hardest hit, with pockets of outages around the municipality, he said. “It came through pretty swiftly,” he said of the storm.
Another 2,500 are out in Morristown, and in Morris Plains, the number is 2,200– approximately 80 percent of JCP&L’s customers there, according to the utility’s outage map.
“It came through suddenly. The wind was just unbelievable,” said Morris Plains Mayor Frank Druetzler. A tree toppled on his property and he was without electricity, like most of the borough.
A pole snapped and toppled, with power lines, onto the deck of a home on Beech Drive, Druetzler added. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, he said. Stiles, Hawthorne, Dogwood and Sun Valley are among borough roadways that are closed, Druetzler said.
Four utility poles were snapped on Western Avenue in Morristown, Mayor Dougherty said.
“I’m assuming we had a micro-burst or some type of tornado,” Dougherty said.
At 4 pm, some 20,000 customers lost power when a Morristown substation went offline, Hajoway said. Work crews got the station back online, along with those customers, she said.
A “Western Night” scheduled for Streeter Pool in Morris Township has been postponed.
We only lost power for about 15 minutes here on South St. in Morristown, thankfully. Thanks for the phone number for JCP&L which was hard to find for some reason.