Pressure Still On JCP&L Following Chatham Power Outage

CHATHAM, NJ — More than a month after a substation failure left thousands of Chatham residents without power, members of the borough council are frustrated with the response from the power company.

Residents in Chatham were without power for more than 30 hours on July 5 and 6, during two of the hottest days of the summer.

In response, 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 to members of the public and the council.

While that meeting answered some questions, it mainly left the public and the council with more frustrations, seeing as these exact issues had been detailed by the council before.

During the July 10 meeting, Jocelyn Mathiasen, a council member who was participating via Zoom, read a letter she had written to a JCP&L representative in 2020, which outlined 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," Mathiasen wrote.

Other council members argued that customers around the borough should have been compensated as a result of the outages. This week, during the council meeting on Monday night, council member Frank Truilo once again demanded credit on a future JCP&L electric bill for those who lost food and medicine due to the outage.

"I draw the line where many of us had to discard the contents of our refrigerators after almost 40 hours without power. Good food and medicine perished because JCP&L grossly misled us and gave us false hope on when our power would resume," Truilo said.

According to the council and mayor, the borough had been told that the power was set to be restored within two hours on July 5.

The mayor of Chatham Borough, Thaddeus Kobylarz, previously stated that the company informed him of the "catastrophic failure" from the beginning but had not alerted customers to its seriousness. Instead, JCP&L gave customers a constantly moving restoration window while it awaited the arrival of its mobile substation.

"Having to discard food and medicine is unforgivable. JCP&L you are accountable for this act of negligence and must pay up. Your words of nope not your fault are no longer acceptable. I demand that you compensate all households who had to discard of food and medicine by offering a credit to all of us on a future electric bill," Truilo said.