Stop signs stand in for traffic lights at major Montclair intersections.
“Our crew has been dispatched to investigate the reported outage. An outage has been reported and restoration is estimated to be by 11:59 PM on 11-09-2012. Thank you for your patience.”
The same message came through for a resident checking on their Montague Place home. The good news? Baristanet readers are tweeting about power being restored to Montclair Ave. near Walnut Street and also at Chestnut, at the end of Forest Street (near Ruthies) and on parts of Grove Street below Watchung Ave. Also hearing power back on Stanford and half of Cambridge.
Mayor Jackson said yesterday that even though some schools have power, he didn’t expect any schools to open until all buildings had power. Next week, per the school calendar, Montclair schools were only planned to be open on Monday and Wednesday — as schools were closed for Election Day and on Thursday and Friday for the N.J.E.A. Convention. Jackson said he is already looking into combining polling locations using the polling places that do have power. Residents may end up going to a different polling location this year and he recommended that people could volunteer to drive seniors and others who could not easily reach a polling location outside their immediate neighborhood.
Have not seen a single PSE&G truck in our area… It would give me greater hope if I did. We are so fortunate that we are only dealing with electricity outage… But, still, would like to see us be able to bounce back within a week. At least we are lucky with the weather thus far.
That’s funny, I was going to write the same thing. I have been out in about the area quite a bit and have yet to see one power truck. I saw Verizon workers repairing cable lines and when I asked them when they thought we would get power back they also echoed the same sentiment. They were surprised that they had not seen any power crews out. What is going on??
Not a single PSE&G truck sighted anywhere in Montclair, and I’ve been around town.
Calling PSE&G’s outage hotline will yield neither detailed nor useful information.
The so-called “interactive outage map” on the PSE&G website, isn’t.
A little perspective here… Just because you don’t see a truck doesn’t mean they aren’t working. Here is a good article on the restoration process. Flooded substations have to be dries and cleaned out first.
http://www.pseg.com/home/customer_service/outage_info/pdf/njcm_summer_2012-restoring%20power.pdf
If you need to recharge/warm up you are invited to St. Luke’s Church on S. Fullerton near Union, and St. James’ Church at Bellevue and Valley.
PLEASE READ & HELP
I’d like to help some of the victims who have been hit hard by hurricane sandy. Please share and help me to donate some money. I will donate the money I’ll get for this dress http://tinyurl.com/ahgk8sa to help victims of hurricane sandy. I was in the fortunate part of New Jersey which wasn’t hit hard but many people have a difficult time.
Auction ends in a couple of hours – please share this on any social media.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
we are lucky. power was restored last night at 9 pm.
be safe
I’ve seen several reports (online and TV) that the focus the last few days was to get harder hit areas like Newark (including the airport), Elizabeth, Hoboken first. And today their focus is to get the oil refineries and gas stations back online.
I would just like to get some useful information re: PSE&G. If you call there and are lucky enough to get a hooman bean on the phone, they tell you the same USELESS information. They can’t even tell you when they will be in a particular neighborhood. I understand that we had a historic storm of horrific proportions but it would be nice if we could get some useful information from our power company.
kay don’t add real info here. Folks like to think that only IF they see a team of workers, a truck and cones, their electricity will come on.
But ask yourself: the last time the electricity came on, was a crew in front of your house?
As someone whose Palatial Estate lies in a section of UPPER Montclair that is prone to losing electricity (this so we can “relate” to those in LOWER Montclair), I never see PSE&G.
But mysteriously, my ‘lectricity comes on.
…. Now if I can only find some gas for my little hamsters who are powering my generator…
The landscapers were here today removing all the downed trees from the property, and my neighbor called to say someone stole all of the gas cans out of the truck! Seems like things are getting worse.
The source of your power outage may be originating blocks away from your home. So just because you don’t actually see the truck, doesn’t mean work isn’t happening. My beef is the lack of communication. They wither need to have a web site that actually works or a FB or Twitter account that lets customers know what’s going on.
Yeah, they’re not big communicators.
All I have to say is DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!
profwilliams, I’m sure the crews are working hard, but you can save the condescending idiocy about seeing trucks at relating to lower montclair. People can see the trees down and transformers blown. Guess how those are dealt with?
Not all the people doing the work have PSE&G on their trucks. We had several trucks on our street this morning (Morse Ave in Watsessing area of Bloomfield) doing work,including inspecting wires that were down, and all of the trucks were from a contractor in Pennsylvania. So they may be hired by PSE&G or it may be Pa. sent help to NJ.
I’ve had plenty of experience with PSE&G as my Glenclair hood goes out at the drop of a hat. We were out for 7 days after Snoctobergeddon.
When you bash PSE&G you need to make a distinction between central office management and the guys on the trucks working long hours after the storm to get you back on the grid.
Any information you get over the phone is pretty much worthless. I’ve been told that my home had power when I was calling from it and it clearly didn’t.
Their systems are so antiquated that they can’t assign jobs to the trucks so they work in an efficient manner. When a truck showed up on my block to reconnect the neighbors across the street on day 6 post storm last year, I ran out with joy to move my car, only to be told by the PSEG worker that they had no work order for my house. They have no way of easily assigning work on the same block or the same neighborhood to the same truck. When I burst into tears, the worker was kind enough to come into my yard and look at the damage to see if he could help anyway (he couldn’t, but he took the time to explain why and confirm that I would have to hire a private electrician to reconnect my house after PSE&G eventually came back).
Don’t be disheartened by the Nov 9 date…we were told Nov 5 and we actually came back on last night.
The conversation that I had with the woman from PSE&G yesterday was bizarre. I didn’t just ask about my house but my whole block, which is totally dark (except for the lucky few with generators). It was almost as if she had no clue we were even in a storm! She asked me if I observed any downed trees or wires on my street. I told her “yes” to both but this indicates that no one from PSE&G was even out to look at my street! Also, I can’t believe that I am the only one from my block who called since we have about 200 or so people living here. Then she gave me the standard answer of “any time between today and Nov. 5.” I asked if she could be a little more specific than that and she replied with the same answer.
For those of you that have not reported an outage, don’t assume they are aware. We tried calling but never got through. If you have access to a computer, register at http://www.pseg.com/home/index.jsp and report your outage. Also, PSE&G is communicating via Twitter here http://twitter.com/PSEGdelivers; although, in very general terms. I’m sure they are overwhelmed with requests and are trying their very best. I am still without power and expectations are no earlier than November 9.
What I cannot fathom is the lack of communication from our Bloomfield Mayor. What has he done to assure residents? Where has he been? Other Mayors have stepped up and are advocating for their townships, what has Bloomfield’s Mayor done???
I am still without power and expectations are no earlier than November 9.
This is what I mean by useless information. Take West Orange, for example. When they say Nov. 5, Nov. 9 or whatever, do they mean the whole town of West Orange or just certain neighborhoods? Which neighborhoods? West Orange is a pretty big town and borders Orange, Roseland, Verona, and parts of Livingston and Millburn. Some residents have their power back but what’s in store for the rest?
Pretty sure the estimates of Nov 9th are just worst-case estimates – they can’t estimate for every customer when they’ll get their power restored, since every block is probably different.
The fact that the estimate for Nov 9th says “11:59pm” is a good indicator that it’s just a BS, CYA sort of thing.
Also I really wish that people would consider that in the grand scheme of things, and all the damage that PSE&G has to repair across the state, maybe restoring power to some areas of Montclair isn’t as high on the list as it is to restoring power to oil refineries, hospitals, senior centers, traffic lights, schools, etc.