January 23, 2019

FirstEnergy employees were well prepared for the arrival of Winter Storm Harper – and their recent efforts were greatly appreciated by elected officials throughout our service territories.

In fact, Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) received a personal thank you from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy when he visited the utility company’s storm headquarters and distribution control center on Jan. 20 for a brief tour and discussion.

During Gov. Murphy’s visit, JCP&L President Jim Fakult shared the storm preparation process and the status of current weather, customer outages and the restoration progress in New Jersey. The state, which experienced less than predicted snow fall, was still hit with high winds, freezing rain, ice and low digit temperatures last weekend that caused JCP&L customer outages.

To prepare, JCP&L brought in 1,000 additional employees, including line crews from Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky and New York to assist its workforce of 1,300 with storm preparations.

Jim also noted strong cooperation with New Jersey Board of Public Utilities officials, operations emergency management personnel, local officials, fire stations and hospitals as key elements to ensuring restoration work and communication with customers run smoothly – especially where safety is concerned.