More than 210,000 Jersey Central Power & Light customers are without power in Monmouth and Ocean counties, and a spokesman says it could be days before the lights come back on for those in communities hit hard by Hurricane Irene.

Spokesman Ron Morano said 373,000 customers had outages statewide as of 3 p.m. Sunday, with 246,000 of those in the central New Jersey counties of Ocean, Monmouth, Middlesex and Burlington.

According to JCP&L's most recent outage map, Howell had among the highest number of outages in Monmouth county, with 6,953 people without power. Long Branch, Wall, Spring Lake, Sea Girt and Manasquan each have a few thousand households without electricity.

In Toms River, 15,902 are without power; in Brick, 12,148. The number of people without power in Point Pleasant Beach, Lacey, Manchester and Barnegat is in the mid to low thousands for each town, while Point Pleasant Beach has 793 homes still dark.

"At this point, all I can tell you is that it's going to be several days," Morano said of the repair timeline for the shore. "We're still out there doing our evaluations and we're beginning to work on restoration."

If you have not already reported an outage in your own home, JCP&L asks that you do so by calling 1-888-544-4877.