Of all people to be affected by Saturday’s (into Sunday morning’s) power outage, Jack Ryan was the first to know about it. Working in his office at Ryan, Inc. on Lehigh Avenue in Union, he heard it occur.
“All of a sudden, there was a loud rumble,” he said, standing in front of his building, which is located in front of the PSE&G sub-station, “Then everything just went out.”
Although he was the first to know, he was by no means the only one affected. At around 10:45 a.m. the lights went on in parts of Roselle Park as well as the surrounding areas. As the day went, little be little, the power came back on for the over 4,500 residents with all power restored by today.
First Ward Councilman Andrew Casais stated, “Parts of my ward, including the area where I live, were one of if not the last to be restored at around 4:00 a.m. today. These things happen but I thank PSE&G for being responsive to the situation as well as the RPPD for putting out a lot of great information via the UC First Alert system throughout the outage. Thank you also to all Borough residents for their patience throughout the day on Saturday.”
Third Ward Councilman Ryan Kelly commented, “I think it’s important to keep our thoughts and prayers with the workers injured during the power outage. I sincerely hope they are okay. This outage was certainly inconvenient to the residents of Roselle Park. One of my concerns was for elderly residents who may rely on power for health devices. While some of these devices have battery backup power, I was still checking in with my elderly neighbors. Additionally, I felt it was important to continuously update my neighbors with any information I found or received. ”
The incident sent three (3) PSE&G workers to the hospital with non-life threatening burns.
Photographs courtesy of Jack Ryan