A violent storm on Friday evening, August 7, brought two large trees down over the NJ Transit Morris-Essex line tracks in South Orange near Meeker Street, damaging PSE&G equipment and NJT catenary wires.
South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum updated residents in a social media post on Saturday morning, when she reported that 99 customers remained without power at that time.
Collum reported that all customer affected by the trees down near Meeker had had their power restored and that the remaining outages where in “several smaller clusters rather than a single major system failure” and were the result of “downed wires and limbs impacting primary electrical lines, many in backyard locations.”
As of Sunday morning, the PSE&G outage map showed zero outages in South Orange (as well as Maplewood).
According to NJ Transit, all service on the line has been restored.
The mayor said that there were no reported injuries.
“It was a rapid-fire evening, with incidents unfolding quickly across our community, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who responded: our Department of Public Works, which worked throughout the storm and continues to clear downed trees and limbs; our Police Department; the South Essex Fire Department; and our Rescue Squad,” wrote Collum. “When events like this happen, I’m always incredibly proud of the preparedness, professionalism, and teamwork of the people who show up for our community when we need them most. Thank you to all of them for their work last night and for the work that continues today.”
