More Than 1,000 Still Without Power In Aberdeen

ABERDEEN, NJ — There are still 1,104 residents in Aberdeen Township without power as of about noon on Tuesday, the Township reports.

Compare that to neighboring Holmdel, where about 700 people do not have electricity as of midday Tuesday. And conditions remain very bad in Marlboro, where an estimated 7,800 homes still had no electricity Tuesday morning.

As a result, Aberdeen Twp. opened Town Hall (1 Aberdeen Square) as a cooling/charging station, if needed. Anyone needing assistance, please call Aberdeen police at 732-566-2054.

Aberdeen Township Public Works Department will begin picking up brush and branches on Wednesday, July 24. If you have brush or branches to be picked up as result of the storm, please call at 732-583-4200, ext. 100 and leave your name and address to be added to the pickup list. All storm related brush and branches must be placed at curbside no later than Monday, July 29, 2019 at 7:00 am.

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 County, 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 Aberdeen, 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