Nearly 700 Still Without Power In Holmdel Tuesday

HOLMDEL, NJ — Monday night's thunderstorms have come and gone, but nearly 700 Holmdel residents remain without electricity as of noon Tuesday.

According to JCP&L, 655 customers in Holmdel are without power, Holmdel police said. Across New Jersey, more than 229,000 were without electricity close to noon on Tuesday. In neighboring Aberdeen, 1,104 residents are still without power as of 12 p.m. An estimated 7,800 homes in Marlboro still had no electricity Tuesday morning.

Holmdel Twp. opened a comfort station at Holmdel Town Hall. Residents are welcome to come in and charge cell phones and other devices. Cold water is also available.

The Comfort Station will remain open until all power has been restored. Police said, "Unfortunately, we do not have any estimated restoration times."

If any special needs residents without power require any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact Holmdel OEM at 732-946-4400.

Power outages were very bad across New Jersey, and crews have down from Canada to help restore power, Peter Peretzman, a spokesman for the Board of Public Utilities, told NJ.com.

“These were very damaging, concentrated storms with Monmouth, Ocean and Burlington hit very hard,” Peretzman said.

The area hardest hit in the entire state were JCP&L customers in Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to that report. In fact, JCP&L has said for decades they want to improve Monmouth's electric reliability and that's why they wanted to build the much-despised Monmouth County Reliability Project two years ago. That was a series of power lines that several towns in the area, including Holmdel and Hazlet, fought and successfully prevented from being built.

It remains unknown at this time what effect the Monmouth County Reliability Project — had it been built — could have had on the mass power outages, many of which lasted for days. Kin Gee, a Holmdel resident who was one of the leaders in fighting the project, maintains that the power lines are not needed.

"A judge, after one and a half years of formal legal proceeding with expert testimonies and in a sharply worded decision, denied JCP&L's petition for MCRP," said Gee. "That decision was unanimously adopted by the NJ Board of Public Utilities. What does that tell you?"

At least one person may have died in Monday night's storm: A 17-year-old teenage boy in Neptune Township died after he was trapped in a home that caught fire. The house's electricity had been knocked out in the storm, and the fire started in his room. A resident heard a fire alarm and awoke to find the boy's room consumed with fire, and the boy trapped inside. Teen Dies In Possible Storm-Related Fire In Monmouth County: PD