PSE&G news mistress Jenn Kramer reports that, as of 10:45 tonight, there are about 250 customers without power in Montclair. Initially, when two manhole covers blew today on Church Street, about 1,500 customers lost power, but their power was restored by 5 pm. Then, when the electric company deliberately cut off power to the area in order to control the situation and protect the underground electrical system,1,000 more customers lost power. Three quarters of those affected had their power back shortly before 9 pm, Kramer said.
Still affected are the areas closest to today's underground fire: parts of Bloomfield Ave., Church St., South Park and South Fullerton.
PSE&G has delivered two backup generators to Montclair, one of which is powering the apartments at 45 Church Street. The other is available for the Montclair Police Department to use at its discretion. PSE&G also delivered several thousands pounds of dry ice to the town's emergency operations center, which is at the fire house.
Although the cause of the underground cable failure is not yet determined, Kramer says "it's likely that heat and high demand complicated it" but didn't cause it.
PSE&G which experienced record demand today, had few problems handling demand outside of Montclair.
It expects demand to be even higher tomorrow. Conserve energy. Here's how.
Meanwhile, we hear that the county executive and sheriff came to town earlier this evening and had a hard time tracking down town manager Joe Hartnett, who was in a town council meeting and wasn't responding to phone calls. Someone was sent to summon him.
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Pablo Guzman on Channel 2 news just reported live (lead story at 11:00) that PSEG said that 1000 Montclair customers would be without power until tomorrow night.
He didn't report precisely where, that info would of course be too trivial for the viewing audience.
Cheers to our hyperlocal blog for filling in some of that info.