JCP&L: Thursday Blast Not Related to Library Explosion

Despite an uncomfortable number of underground electrical failures over the past year, JCP&L representatives have maintained that the latest, , is not related to any other incidents, including .

"Yesterday's events are no way related to what happened with the Morristown library," JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano said Friday afternoon. "We are constantly evaluating all of our infrastructure and making improvements and repairs as necessary."

As of Friday afternoon, workers were still repairing what ultimately had been determined to be two sub-transmission circuits in the underground vault located in front of the Walgreens pharmacy on South Street. Approximately 1,700 customers south and east of the area had been without power as a result of the incident, which occurred at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday. 1,000 of them had power restored by 9 p.m., with all but five regaining power by 1 a.m.

Morano said three of the five remaining without power were currently vacant businesses, and that all five would have power by midnight Friday.

Power through JCP&L would not be restored to the three business in front of the vault–, and –until all work had been completed, which Morano estimated to be by Monday morning.

Morano emphasized that all of the affected customers were not served by the Morristown network, preventing any power disruptions to the business-heavy downtown area.

Because of the electrical equipment's location–underground as opposed to above ground–there is a lot housed in a contained unit, which can cause a different situation than if one of those pieces failed in an above-ground system, Morano noted.

Morristown Business Administrator Michael Rogers said he does not believe anyone–including himself–sees a direct relationship between Thursday's incident and past incidents, "the general question is regarding the infrastructure itself ... it has been an ongoing issue for years, especially in the last year and a half.

"What is being done? What type of upgrades? Are they doing enough," Rogers asked. "It always is connected to a public safety concern. That's all we care about."

With temperatures nearing 100 degrees on Thursday, Rogers said a major concern had been if more than two circuits of five total powering the central business district had failed. "Another circuit going down would have created a widespread outage," he said. "We're glad that did not happen on a 100-degree day."

While JCP&L has determined where the failure occurred, it has yet to determine the exact reason. Morano said that information would be made public once a cause was determined.

Besides the library explosion in May 2010, there was earlier this year that also had some people wondering why these sort of problems continued to happen in Morristown. Morano said, "This is a separate set of circumstances."

While Rogers conceded that electrical systems can at any time fail, "why does it continue to fail in Morristown? That's why we continue to ask the questions, about what is being done by JCP&L in Morristown.

"What have they done to improve it, and what else needs to be done," Rogers said. "We'll be again asking questions and looking for answers. ... This will be an ongoing process."