PSE&G Still Working to Restore Power

Some residents still were without power Tuesday afternoon, including the elderly and infirm residents of the Christian Health Care Center and Eastern Christian Children's Retreat.

PSE&G crews continue to work to repair the damage wrought from the weekend's powerful storm and have restored power to much of the Sicomac and Cedar Hill areas. However, township officials will not be pleased until Wyckoff's problems are fully fixed.

"We're not going to be satisfied until every home is back," said Committeeman Kevin Rooney, the deputy mayor.

Police Lt. Charles Van Dyk said the situation is much improved from Monday, although some areas remain in the dark. Detours remain at Wyckoff Avenue and Glendale Road and at Wyckoff and Lafayette avenues.

"It's not too bad today. The nice weather helps," Van Dyk said, as homes remain without heat, as well.

Mayor Rudy Boonstra said there are a "few isolated spots with relatively few homes, but of course, that doesn't make them any less important" than other areas.

Among those isolated spots are the Christian Health Care Center and Eastern Christian Children's Retreat, which both remain on backup generators.

"We're feeling better today. The generators have been uninterrupted since Saturday," said Doug Struyk, president and CEO of the Sicomac Road facility.

Struyk said PSE&G has assured the center that it will not leave the township until all power issues are addressed in that corner of Wyckoff.

Eastern Christian Executive Director Jayne Press said the facility has been working off generator power since Sunday morning with few problems.

"It's still been difficult. The storm has taken a toll on us," she said, citing some leaky roofs.

Services to the retreat's residents have not been affected, although Press said some of the staff have had difficulties in getting to work. However, she's hopeful power will be restored today.

A source of the two health-care facilities' problems was a series of downed telephone poles and lines on Merrywood Drive, off of Holly Drive in the Sicomac section of the township. Township officials had been pressuring PSE&G to respond to the block, as wires had been live as of Monday.

Utility crews were finally attending to the area as of this afternoon, and township officials have been given assurances that the situation will be rectified, which will help to bring Christian Health and Eastern Christian back online.

Van Dyk said that emergency responders couldn't "even get anywhere near" Merrywood until PSE&G responded to assure township officials and residents that the lines were no longer live.

While the Cedar Hill shopping center is open today after outages had closed the strip of stores, the neighboring condominiums are not fully powered. The mayor and Rooney said some of the residents, who are predominantly seniors, are still without power, including a Brewster Road resident whose infirm wife relies on a chair lift to navigate around the home.

However, both Boonstra and Rooney have been in contact with Dave Hollenbeck, PSE&G's regional public affairs manager, who's assured both that the lingering issues in the Sicomac area will be addressed today. Hollenbeck also promised Rooney he would relay the information concerning the Brewster Road resident.

Overall, township officials said the utility company has been more responsive today, with Boonstra saying both communication and on-site response has improved from Monday, when officials complained of what they viewed as a lackluster emergency response.

As of 4:30 p.m., Karen Johnson, a PSE&G spokesperson, said 30,000 residents remained without power around the state, with 24,000 offline in Bergen County. The utility has restored power to more than 93 percent of those who lost it during the storm, with the help of utility workers from other companies on loan to address Bergen County's problems. Johnson said the majority of remaining outages will be repaired by Wednesday, with the balance being fixed by Thursday.