Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty is urging everyone to stay off the roads today. That includes non-essential municipal employees.
While praising Morristown’s DPW for “doing a great job,” the Mayor added: “Don’t come to work unless you are essential. The roads are treacherous.”
As of 6 am, he said, town streets were “a whole lot better than the state highways. Routes 78 and 24 were a mess. Cars were stuck and stranded all over the place.”
Mayor Dougherty’s fulltime job, at the Prudential Center, required him to be in Newark this morning. What’s usually a 25-minute journey took three hours, he said.
Morristown got about 20 inches of snow overnight, said the Mayor, noting an exact figure is hard to nail down because high winds continue blowing the snow around. ABC-TV reported that Morristown had a gust measured at 53 mph.
Wind knocked out power on Elm Street on Monday morning, according to Frank Somma of Morristown’s Office of Emergency Management. He said he expected it will be restored before long. The OEM and Red Cross were prepared to open an emergency shelter at Morristown High School Sunday night, but that was not necessary, Frank said.
A downed wire knocked out a power substation serving residents on Elm Street this morning, confirmed Ron Morano of Jersey Central Power & Light. He could not immediately say how soon power will be restored; across Morris County, about 6,000 people are without electricity because of the storm, Ron said.
No injuries were reported overnight, said Police Detective Lt. Steve Sarinelli.
“We weathered the storm, no pun intended,” he said. The fact that the blizzard came on a weekend and was well forecast helped people prepare for it, he reckoned.
Morristown’s DPW, meanwhile, is prepared to make its normal trash pickups today, said Jeff Hartke, the town engineer.
“So far, so good,” said Jeff, who had 11 snow plows on the road Sunday night. A seven-person crew has relieved the night shift, and the night crew will return at 2 pm.
Jeff has 30 people on his public works staff in 2007; that’s down to 24 now. But he was able to get through the blizzard without hiring outside contractors.
He has not yet calculated the cost of the snow removal. DPW workers are likely to be whistling Jingle Bells: Because the storm hit on a Sunday, snow crews are entitled to double-overtime, Jeff said.
