Red Bank and Shrewsbury Outage Update

Jersey Central Power and Light promised to have most area residents restored to power earlier this week, setting Saturday as the day when all residents would be restored to power. As outages have persisted, Gov. Chris Christie recently extended that deadline to Sunday.

For residents in Red Bank and Shrewsbury without power, the wait has become more than tedious.

As of Friday morning, more than 2,000 JCP&L customers remained without power in both towns combined. Though the utility maintains that it's been working steadily, having deployed thousands of electrical workers to restore as many residents to power as possible as quickly as possible, the outage numbers in both towns have remained relatively stagnate for days, dropping - and rising following Wednesday's nor'easter - a couple hundred customers while significant portions of each town remain without power.

As of 6:45 a.m., JCP&L's outage map showed that 1,323 Red Bank customers were without power. In Shrewsbury that total is 753. 

In Red Bank, borough Administrator Stanley Sickles' big board remains the same. The board is a large map of the town, highlighted in yellow where power has been restored. Though much of the board is covered by the neon yellow, large portions of the board remain white, or without light. 

Little has changed on the big board over the past couple of days and in both towns, wires that were downed when Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey with full force nearly two weeks ago largely remained untouched.

Sickles said JCP&L has been saying the right thing, though they've failed to follow up with the major needed to repair primary lines and large jobs. In Shrewsbury and Red Bank, power restoration has meant isolating those areas where significant work still needs to be done and leaving it - and the residents and businesses located there - until later.

As of Thursday, mayors in both towns remained without power. But while Shrewsbury Mayor Donald Burden has been more forgiving, Red Bank Mayor Pat Menna has lambasted the utility on his public Facebook page and has promised to stop making excuses for JCP&L's delay. 

There is one positive, however, though admittedly it's but a small consolation. Today brings sunny skies along with temperatures that are expected to rise to the mid 50's today. It's a welcome departure for those without power as the recent nor'easter brought several inches of snow and temperatures in the low 30's to the much of the Greater Red Bank area.