The Camden County Department of Public Works (DPW), Public Safety and Parks continue to work on clearing out and assessing damage from yesterday’s super storm. At this time most county highway systems are clear and open with a significant amount of work being done on hundreds of downed trees. The Camden County Communications Center was inundated with a 900 percent increase in fire calls and 2,432 total calls over a six hour period yesterday.
“Our crews are working on several roadways right now to ensure the health and welfare of drivers and residents throughout our highway system,” said Freeholder Ian Leonard, liaison to the Camden County DPW. “The scope and severity of this storm in the short period of time it struck the county was extreme and destructive. Personnel have been working since the weather conditions cleared yesterday and will continue to clear debris over the next 48 hours.”
There were more than 1,000 fire calls throughout the county compared to an average day of about 100 calls for service. To put this storm into focus the Department of Public Safety took in 3,522 calls for service in a 54 hour period during Hurricane Sandy. From yesterday, in a six hour window, dispatchers took in almost 70 percent of the total call volume from the Sandy event.
“I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the dispatchers that performed admirably during this very strenuous time period,” Freeholder Michelle Gentek said. “This kind of call volume during this type of weather event tests everyone’s limits, but our employees all responded to the challenge and not only assisted county residents, but took overflow calls from other counties as well.”
In the aftermath of this super storm, power continues to be an issue and both utility providers are working to restore electricity for thousands of Camden County customers. Atlantic City Electric and PSE&G have both been in touch with our Office of Emergency Management to ensure the Freeholder Board they are working as quickly as possible to remedy the situation.
With the loss of power the south county branch of the Camden County Library System will be closed today. In addition, public transportation system PATCO is still out of service. While this storm did impact the entire county the southern region was hit the hardest from the Rt. 295 corridor on down.
There will be another status report to come later in the day.
If the storm took out electricity, residents should remember to call an outage in immediately to their utility company so they can identify the location and coordinate crews to restore power. Below are numbers and contact info for the two power providers and the two gas utilities in Camden County:
PSE&G: 1–800–436-PSEG (7734)
PSEG website: http://pseg.com/home/customer_service/outage_info/index.jsp
Atlantic City Electric: 1–800–833–7476
Atlantic City Electric website: http://www.atlanticcityelectric.com/home/
South Jersey Gas: 1–800–582–7060
South Jersey Gas website: http://southjerseygas.com/
