JCP&L to Borough: We've Improved Communications

A representative from Jersey Central Power & Light told the Borough Council Wednesday that the company has made significant improvements in its communication system.

John Anderson, the company’s representative for Hopatcong, said the company junked its fax-based system for one that includes emails, access through the company’s website, and a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, the company has hired 150 new line workers, Anderson said.

“We used to do a blast fax,” he said. “If there was an outage late on a Friday, we would send out the fax and when you came in on Monday there would be a 36-hour old message in the fax machine.”

He said the company had improved its communication software so that emails can be sent to specific officials, such as all mayors in its service area, he said.

The big change was using mapping software that broke down the service area by voting districts so that New Jersey’s overlapping ZIP Codes will no longer be used when tracking outages, Anderson said.

Councilwoman Marie Galante asked if that meant that borough residents would be given information that was more specific to their neighborhoods, and Anderson said yes.

He also said the company has developed a new smartphone application that allows users to track and report outages. He suggested the council should place the application on the borough’s website.

Mayor Sylvia Petillo said the company did as well as it could given the nature of the two storms last year, Hurricane Irene and the Halloween snowstorm.

Anderson said Irene knocked out power to 320,000 of the company’s 450,000 customers, and the snow storm knocked 380,000 customers offline.