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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Some Plainfield neighborhoods still without power


Tree at Chetwynd and Hillside pulled power lines down.
 
Some Plainfield neighborhoods are still without power as of Tuesday morning.

The picture above was taken at 8 AM today; the tree fell across Chetwynd Avenue, pulling down power lines and leaving the neighborhood without electricity. (As an aside, I know the owners asked the City to take this tree down some time ago; a crew came, but it took down a different tree, leaving this one standing.)

Around the corner I ran into resident Eric Plummer (who chaired the Cable Franchise Committee when the Comcast franchise was last negotiated -- in 1999!). He said that his family has been without power since Saturday night, except for a few minutes around 11 PM Monday, and then plunged back into darkness.

I am getting comments and emails from residents of the affected areas expressing their frustration. Please be aware the PSE&G crews are working around the clock to get power restored (see more here).

Council President Annie McWilliams has posted PSE&G contact information on her blog (see here).

Unlike Lake Woebegon, everyone cannot be at the front of the line.

Be sure to check the City website's front page (see here), where they appear to be updating the street closings by greying out the names of streets that have been cleared.

Deputy OEM Coordinator Broderick Fleming has also posted an overview of the OEM planning and response (see here, PDF).

PSE&G has said that this is the worst outage it has ever had.

The issues with falling trees causing power outages in Plainfield can be attributed in part to the ground being saturated BEFORE the storm even arrived, leaving many trees susceptible of being blown over.



Stump of tree that fell across Stelle Avenue,
cut up and removed by DPW crews on Monday.

Plainfield's DPW crews are also doing yeoman service clearing the streets and I ran into them at several locations yesterday.

Even if you are experiencing problems, be aware that crews are working feverishly to clear up adverse conditions.



-- Dan Damon [follow]

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2 comments:

Ron said...

That tree on Chetwynd was finally cleaned up yesterday and you can now drive into Chetwynd from Woodland and Hillside. However we were told expect 2 to 3 more days before power is restored (so Friday night?). Meanwhile the surrounding streets all got their power back by 7pm last night

NP said...

Tree crews from Ohio were seen in Plainfield today. Not sure if they were passing through. Also, electric company crews from Pennsylvania and Ohio Edison were seen in surrounding towns.

In one nearby town where there is no power, they are serviced by wells and septic systems so...no water and no flushes. Plainfield let us be grateful we have a 100 year old plus sewerage system and water system so there are two less things we have to deal with.