Atlantic Electric: Most Have Power; LBI Still Dark

Only 2 percent of the 220,000 Atlantic City Electric customers who lost electricity as a result of Hurricane Sandy were still without power Saturday.

But 23 percent of the company's customers who live in Ocean County - 12,000 of whom live on Long Beach Island - were still in the dark Saturday. Manahawkin, or Stafford Township, had less than 100 without power.

All customers who are able to accept power will see it restored by the end of the weekend, electric company officials said. According to officials, less than 43,000 customers are without power, including 29,000 in the barrier island communities and 14,000 on the mainland.

Atlantic City Electric expected to have restored service to all mainland customers by midnight Friday, with the exception of select communities in eastern Atlantic and Ocean counties that suffered far more extensive infrastructure damage, electric company officials said. They should be restored by the end of the weekend, according to electric company officials.

“We continue to have close to 2,000 restoration personnel in the ACE service territory.  This includes crews from our sister utilities in Maryland and Delaware as well as over 1,000 mutual assistance personnel from as far away as Texas and Alabama,” Atlantic City Region President Vincent Maione said.  “We are making tremendous progress.  All outages on the mainland have been assigned to crews and the goal is to have power restored to these customers today.  And, we’re making great progress on the barrier islands too, where we’ve already restored power to half of our customers.

“The destruction in some of our South Jersey communities has been overwhelming.  In some cases, we’re ready to restore power to a customer but the conditions on their property don’t allow us to do so safely,” noted Maione. “We’ve been working closely with road clearing crews, natural gas distribution crews and emergency management personnel to assure that we work safely and in a coordinated manner."