Update: Schools Closed Monday; Thousands Without Power; Roads in Short Hills Dangerous
Township deals with another serious power outage, fallen trees and wires and lots of snow.
Photos
Updated 9:30 a.m., 10:15 a.m., 2:42 p.m., 5:45 p.m., 10:10 p.m.
With three schools without power and many roads, particularly in Short Hills impassable, Millburn Schools will be closed on Monday.
Deerfield, Hartshorn and Glenwood are without power and Mayor Sandra Haimoff said there is no way buses could get through some of the streets on the bus routes.
"Basically this storm did the most damage in Short Hills," said Haimoff, who rode the streets of the town with Town Business Adminstrator Tim Gordon and Fire Chief Mike Roberts. "There are wires and trees down everywhere. It's very dangerous right now.
"We saw people walking around to look at the damage but that is extremely dangerous," she said. "We want to emphasize that people should not attempt to touch trees because there could be wires underneath them."
In fact County Adminstrator, Joseph DiVincenzo has suggested parents find alternatives to door-to-door trick-or-treating this year.
At 5:45 p.m. Haimoff heard from power company officials that they estimate that 95 percent of homes in Millburn-Short Hills will have power by Thursday and they hope to have the rest powered up by Friday.
Also at that time, they told her that more homes would be with out power for about an hour while they work to get about 800 homes back online in the area around Cypress and Cambridge this evening.
Haimoff reported that the Department of Public Works and private contractors have cleared all the trees that can be cleared and the ones that are left are entangled with power lines and have to be removed by Jersey Central Power & Light.
For the first time in 61 years, Millburn did not have its Halloween Parade and in Short Hills it will be dangerous to trick-or-treat in a lot of the neighborhoods.
With more than 3,300 people still without power and trees and wires down, Fire Chief Mike Roberts said the fire department had to cancel because safety concerns.
"I don't want to promote people coming out of their homes for this," he said. "There are places where it's not safe."
The Mall at Short Hills is closed today because it is without power and there are downed wires on roads leading to it; Route 124 between Kings and the Mall is closed because of downed trees and wires.
Firefighters answered 150 calls Saturday night, mostly for wires and trees down, but also some stranded motorists and some carbon monoxide alarms, he said.
"I was driving [township business adminstrator] Tim Gordon around and the branches were snapping and dropping all around us," Roberts said.
Jersey Central Power & Light is in a “make safe” mode in Northern New Jersey today, as it tries to restore power to 270,000 customers.
With all the downed trees and wires, getting power back on will most likely be a multi-day event, said Haimoff, who is in touch with the power company this time around.
Haimoff said power company officials told her this morning that they hope to restore power to 50,000 to 70,000 customers today in several counties in northern New Jersey without power.
“We have the same frustration as with Irene with the power being out but at least we are getting some information this time,” she said.
During Irene, the township could not even get in touch with JCP&L, she said. This time, she's in contact with the company and is giving the one JCP&L truck they've found in town a police escort to each location because she does not want it to leave.
"And any other truck that comes to town will get the same reception," she said.
According to JCP&L’s outage website, at 2:40 p.m., 3,363 customers in Short Hills and Millburn are without power, with 2,846 of those in Short Hills. Most of those without power were also with power overnight. According to Haimoff and JCP&L's Twitter remarks, additional crews from Ohio and Central New Jersey are in Northern New Jersey working to make it safe and restore power. However, it could be days before power is restored.
As for the parade, the 61st Annual Edward J. O'Brien Halloween Parade was scheduled for today from noon to 3 p.m. in Taylor Park and the Fire Department had already paid for a lot of the event, which was to include prizes for costumes, food, a hay ride, pony rides, and a pumpkin patch.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with 300 pumpkins," Roberts said.
Cancelling the parade was sad because it's a tradition and more than 300 children had pre-registered as of early last week, he said. Plus, it will be a beautiful day by noon, but power may still be out and lines and trees will still be down.
JCP&L customers are urged to call 1-888-LIGHTSS(544-4877) to report power outages or any other issue.
Zoinks
10:27 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Any word on school tomorrow?
Zoinks
10:33 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Also, another question that maybe you can get an answer to: is the town going to pick up branches and limbs from the street as they did after Irene?
eh270
3:20 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
I'd be surprised if they didn't, seems like there was just as much tree debris this time as there was with Irene.
Hank
11:34 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
encourage all without power that you are in contact with to call JCP&L--the more you call the faster a line truck will be scheduled--1-888-LIGHTSS---
mommakiddies
11:36 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
I just did a drive by and was stunned at some of the damage in the Short Hills area. Two huge trees down on Hobart alone... The downtown area looked pretty normal but the Short Hills area looked like a cyclone went trhough it--trees down everywhere, including some obvious new ones in the middle of some streets. I guess I am wondering if 1) schools have power (I think MMS does) and 2) What safety precautions will we have to take for Halloween. For example--if school is closed, kids will want to go out that much earlier, which means I hope the town is assessing if it is even safe at this point given the number of power lines that are down, touching the streets, and hanging low off the limbs. We could say parents need to be aware,but I think this is beyond that. I did not feel safe driving around Short Hills, let alone walking.
Laura Griffin
4:32 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
This question about Halloween is excellent. Right now, the streets in Short Hills and parts of Millburn are not safe for trick-or-treating and no one should even consider mischief night or whatever tonight is supposed be.:-) They have said it will take awhile to get all the power back, but when they will have all the streets safe, we don't know yet. Joe DiVincenzo is asking residents in Essex County to consider alternatives to trick-or-treating door-to-door because of downed wires. http://patch.com/A-ns0J
Laura Griffin
12:37 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Yes, some parts of Short Hills and Millburn look like war zones. It's going to take awhile to clean up this mess. No word on the schools yet. Am checking. I'll be uploading more pictures and encourage everyone to do the same from your neighborhoods!
Tom
1:37 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
i live in short hills and i have many huge trees in my backyard. All last night, massive limbs were falling on our roof, and we had to sleep in the basement. before the storm was at its worst, i realized how vulnerable our cars were and we moved them into the garage. that was a good choice because an hour later a tree fell on the very spot where they were parked. Our backyard looks like it was bombed.
Laura Griffin
2:40 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
School will be closed tomorrow. About to update the story. You should be getting a revers 9-1-1 on that shortly.
Susan1
3:05 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Record snowfall early in the year, 107 degrees in the summer, hurricane, flooding, earthquake, freak early season storm... Does anyone else feel like we're getting a message here?
Laura Griffin
4:34 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Hasn't been a weirder weather year in my memory...
Laura Griffin
3:08 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Edward, in this case, the Township is going to use its Reverse 9-1-1 system to let people know. So parents should be getting two calls. They're trying to get as many people as possible and requesting that you tell your neighbors who don't have power and might not get the calls.
Larry
5:14 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
So if Tuesday comes and one school still has power problems, will they close all schools, or just the one(s) with problems?
Laura Griffin
5:46 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Planned outage starting now for Old Short Hills Road, Hobart, Nottingham, Wyoming and Millburn Avenue for about an hours as crews work to bring about 800 homes back up on Cambridge and Cypress.
Ira Berkowitz
5:55 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Did a couple of drives around Short Hills. Looks worse than Irene. Huge trees down, lots of street closures or partials closures, limbs and wires hanging down all over the place. Did not see one utility truck working or township crew doing any clean-up.
Jessica Z-R
7:25 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
I wonder if our town will make an official statement re: trick or treating? Seems dangerous in my neighborhood (Brookhaven), due to downed wires. In Summit they apparently rescheduled for Friday, Nov 4.
mommakiddies
8:16 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Jessica: I sincerely hope they do the same as Summit here. It is completely dangerous around town and even if we direct the children to "safe areas" the parents will still have to drive by many roads that are simply un passable.
HartshornDad
9:06 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Laura, not sure I understand how they can bring 800 homes up on Cambridge and Cypress, since those streets have around 25 homes each. And, since Cambridge is still dark 3 hours after the planned outage, not sure that the remediation was successful.
Laura Griffin
10:10 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Homes in the areas. The crews were on Cambridge and Cypress. I will make that clear -- still good to know that it's still dark there. Sounds like it is all probably going to take longer than expected.
SHMom
10:23 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
So what was the CEO of JCP&L’s parent, FirstEnergy, Anthony Alexander’s, variable compensation based on in 2010? According to First Energy’s 2011 proxy (https://www.firstenergycorp.com/content/dam/investor/files/proxy-materials/2011/2011%20Notice%20of%20Annual%20Meeting%20and%20Proxy%20Statement.pdf), 70% earnings per share (EPS), 10% net debt balance and 20% safety. The CEO of FirstEnergy had ZERO percent of his variable compensation based on Operations, Service or Reliability. Not only that, the most exposure that any senior executive’s variable compensation was based on service and reliability metrics was 10%.
And how did senior management’s performance stack up versus their bonus metrics? Senior management, including Mr. Alexander, met every financial metric that determined the overwhelming portion of their variable compensation and missed (“below target”) on every operational metric. Kind of makes you wonder what motivates the company’s senior management team – earnings and not customer service – hey why does operational performance matter when you have a monopoly?
Isn’t it about time the township revisits the agreement with FirstEnergy? Let’s shine the light on FirstEnergy….that’s of course if we had any!
m
11:05 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saw several JCPL trucks rolling into town at 6:00pm--that's days earlier than Irene
Ira Berkowitz
9:21 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
Still have not seen one utility truck or township clean-up crew out. Spoke to several folks from the area who report the same. Would love to know if anyone has seen crews out dealing with the power issues and/or the clean-up.
Laura Griffin
9:34 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
I have seen two. One said JCP&L on the side, parked downtown yesterday morning, and the other was a cherry picker with a man working on a utility pole in Short Hills. (I didn't see the name on the truck.)
mommakiddies
9:34 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
I drove around town yesterday and I saw two.
mommakiddies
9:35 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
In all fairness should add--I definitely saw wires on the ground, on trees etc and it did not feel like there were that many trucks out relative to the need. I think the issue is the need is widespread!!! They are tapped out!
JZ Quinn
10:46 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
I think the Mayor should take a stand and get everyone on the same page. Let's get the word out to reschedule Halloween trick or treating until Friday when it is safe and the kids can have fun! Its really not that hard....
Max Sauberman
11:29 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
What schools currently still don't have power?
Teri
5:01 pm on Monday, October 31, 2011
Can anyone tell me what roads are closed? I have to travel through Millburn tomorrow. I usually drive on Old Short Hills road down to Livingston/West Orange. Anyone know how that road is?