'Catastrophic Failure': Chatham Council Blasts JCP&L For Power Outages

CHATHAM, NJ — A substation failure last week left thousands of Chatham residents without power during some of the hottest summer temperatures this year, raising concerns among residents and borough officials.

On Monday night, the Borough of Chatham Council, the mayor, and residents had the opportunity to express their displeasure to a Jersey Central Power & Light representative about last week's two-day power outage.

The power company sent Jacqueline Espinoza, JCP&L's manager of external affairs, to explain what caused the outage and the difficulties in restoring power, which took nearly 30 hours to fully repair.

Espinoza stated that last week, JCP&L line workers were in the substation when they recognized that something was not operating properly. "They called into our control center and said, 'We have a problem here; we are going to have to take an outage and let's assess what's going on.'"

The power company decided to proceed with the first outage in order to avoid a larger and more widespread outage that would affect more equipment.

"We decided for this outage we were going to bring in a mobile substation, hook it all up so we can restore every customer as quickly as possible. That is very involved; there is a lot going on with hooking up a mobile substation. There are just a lot of procedures in place for safety, and it's time-consuming," Espinoza said.

The outages, which occurred on July 5 and 6, happened on hot days with highs of 90 degrees. As a result, borough officials announced that the Memorial Park Pool will be free of charge to all residents.

Thaddeus Kobylarz, the mayor of Chatham Borough, stated that he was informed by the company of the "catastrophic failure" from the beginning and questioned why JCP&L hadn't alerted customers to the seriousness. Instead, a constant moving window for restoration was provided to customers while JCP&L awaited the arrival of its mobile substation.

"I say this with all due respect, but the performance in terms of communication and in terms of estimating exactly when the service would return was not very good," Kobylarz said. "We can appreciate a catastrophic failure and that should have been expressed and shared with your customers."

Kobylarz asked Espinoza what the power company was planning on doing to improve its communication with the borough. Espinoza stated that she would relay the information from the meeting to JCP&L representatives, who would be meeting on Friday to discuss how to prevent this from happening again.

"I admit we need to get better at that," Espinoza said.

JCP&L received a "zero" grade from Chatham Borough Council member Len Resto for their response, and JCP&L stood for "Just Can't Provide Light."

"It was horrible. There's just no other way to get around that," Resto said.

Resto and Councilman Frank Truilo argued that customers be compensated for spoiled food and medications as a result of the outages.

"I'm disappointed to hear of the reimbursement policy of JCP&L is that they don't reimburse, and largely because I guess they think they are acts of god. Well, this was an act of JCP&L; this was negligence on the part of JCP&L. They should be reimbursing and we will go to the BPU to get that reimbursement. We are going to make JCP&L pay," Resto said.

Jocelyn Mathiasen, a council member who was participating via Zoom, read a letter she had written to a JCP&L representative in 2020, outlining the same exact problems in communication.

"My concern is and continues to be JCP&L's communication. The written communication to customers and to elected officials came off as defensive and unsympathetic. The communication was so poor that every municipality had to jump in and try to tell residents what was going on," Mathiasen wrote. "The incorrect and vague information online and from the call center is infuriating to residents and indicates a problem with JCPL's CRM software system."

According to Espinoza, the power company has since spoken with its IT team to resolve the current issues on its end.