Residents Express Frustrations on Being Without Power for Days

Updated: The substation in Sewaren has been fixed.


Update: According to PSE&G, at around 3 p.m. a subsation issue in Sewaren causes about 40,000 customers to be without power again in Edison, Scotch Plains, Rahway and surrounding areas.


Some Scotch Plains residents are still in the dark as it hits the two week mark since Sandy made her way through the tri-state area. The rest of Scotch Plains and Fanwood residents suffered at least 10 days without power in their homes.

Mary DePaola, Scotch Plains mayor, said she is very unhappy with how her borough performed.

"How do you contact 23,000 residents when there is no power, no TV, no telephone, no e-mail and let them know what’s going on?" she asked.

It’s a question Scotch Plains failed to answer before Sandy. The borough, DePaola said, didn’t have in place reverse-911 calls or a way to get those calls to residents’ cell phones. That will be fixed, she said.

Last week she fired Paul Malool, the town’s emergency management coordinator, because, she said, of poor performance during and after the storm.

She said a report is being written on how to do better next time. One idea is to have block captains who would be responsible for their street or neighborhood and would deliver fliers to their area.

Additionally, the information PSE&G provided for Scotch Plains continually changed and the restoration dates residents were provided with were never accurate for most.

Governor Chris Christie announced that 99 percent of power would be restored in New Jersey by Saturday night, but much of Scotch Plains must have been in the final one percent because residents did not see restoration until Sunday or early Monday.

Other residents, such as The Wolfe's, who live on Round Hill Road are still without power.

The Wofle's said their home lost power on Monday at 5 p.m. along with most of the neighborhood. 

Once trees had been removed allowing them to travel from their home, they placed an order with PSE&G on Nov. 1. After not hearing back from the company, they placed another order on Nov. 10.

"Power to the south of us down Rahway had been restored by this time," Skylar Wolfe said. "But Round Hill and the roads to the north were still dark."

When Skylar called again on Sunday the automated system said power would be restored by Tuesday, past the promise date of restoration for the state.

Each time the couple called PSE&G throughout Sunday they were given different answers. Some representatives told them it would be Tuesday, while others told them to hold for a supervisor. On three seperate calls, they were never given to a supervisor, but rather disconnected. 

One representative told them that power had been restored to their area. The representative noted that only one home in Scotch Plains was without power and all other work orders had been cancelled.

"I put in new work orders with increasing frustration, but they were all met with a Tuesday or later deadline.  The online system stopped giving us ETA for repair, if we submitted a new order it would just auto affix 12 hours later as our time of restoration," Skylar stated.

All of the calls the Wolfe's made might have done something because at around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday a PSE&G car was driving around their neighborhood. The woman inside said she was surveying homes that were without power. Once she realized the area was without power she called PSE&G trucks to the Wolfe's area of Scotch Plains.

Skylar stated within an hour their power was restored, however around 9:30 this morning their street once again lost power.

Several residents Patch spoke with said they knew exactly what date and time they would receive for restoration when calling PSE&G because it was always 12 or 48 hours from when they placed the call. Yet when those hours passed and they called again they received a new time that was another 12 or 48 hours later.

While schools, hospitals and nursing homes were among the locations meant to be a top priority for PSE&G, two of the elementary schools in Scotch Plains, School One and Coles were without power the entire week of Sandy and did not reopen until Nov. 12.

Ashbrook Nursing Home was running on generators until Sunday at around 5 p.m.

Residents on parts of Raritan Road were also without power until Sunday evening.

Residents of the Bayberry Apartment Complex took to the streets to protest their power outages last week and within hours PSE&G had restored power to the complex.

Pamela Shlissel of Highlander Drive received power back to her home on Nov. 8 but reached out to Patch to express that large areas on the south side of Scotch Plains such as Berwyck Chase and Clarks Lane still were without power on Sunday morning.

A Berwyck Chase resident believed they would be the last to receive power back, but the area had it restored on Sunday evening.

In an email to Patch, a Bryant Avenue resident noted how the utility company just kept pushing the date back.


"The residents on our street are concerned that at our block has been overlooked and quite frankly we've had enough of living in a cold, dark house," he stated. "We're disappointed by the lack of action on our local government to hold PSE&G accountable to this timetable and lack of overall communication to the many residents that are still suffering.  It's a terrible thing and we feel helpless"


The PSE&G website currently removed all the plans for restoration. At the top of the page is a message, "Sandy was devastating, thanks to everyone who helped us rise to the challenge."


The township of Scotch Plains sent out a message on Monday afternoon that they are no longer in the emergency management stage and will be moving to clean up and removal efforts, read more about those efforts here.