Almost two thirds of New Jerseyans — 62 percent — were without power this morning after Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey and the surrounding region Monday night and this morning. That broke all-time records for peak power outages and blew away Irene’s million or so, with a count of around 2,437,400 customers without power for the state’s largest three electric utilities as of 6 a.m.
“The story of this storm has shifted from wind to water, which is having severe impacts,” said Paul Rosengren, a spokesman for PSE&G’s parent company, Monday night.
Officials at Public Service Electric & gas, the state’s largest utility, with 2.2 million electric customers statewide, said Monday night they proactively powered down a string of substations due to massive flooding from several bodies of water.
Jersey Central Power & Light reported 937,140 customers out of power at 6 a.m., which were worst in Monmouth, Ocean, Morris, Sussex counties but spread throughout the company’s 1.1 million customer statewide service territory.
