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NJ governor directs Board of Public Utilities to investigate storm response by power companies

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy today said that he has directed the state’s Board of Public Utilities to investigate of how utility companies responded to the twin winter storms that struck New Jersey over the last week, leaving hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents without power.

“My office has instructed President Fiordaliso and the BPU to conduct a full investigation into the responses to the storm,” Murphy said. “We are going to examine what went wrong, and whether the plans for protecting and strengthening our grid devised post-Sandy have been followed statewide. We will look to see if all preparedness measures were taken before last Friday, knowing a major event was coming. If they have not been, that is entirely inexcusable.”

Murphy also announced that hearings will be held in areas served by JCP&L, the utility company responsible for most of the outages. The has ordered that all New Jersey-based utilities’ crews must stay in-state until all customers affected by the storms have had their power restored.

“The BPU will be conducting an immediate in-depth review of the storm-related board orders implemented post-Sandy,” BPU President Joseph Fiordaliso said.

Murphy also directed BPU to work to improve storm preparedness in order to avoid future significant, long-lasting outages in the state.