Mayor: Expect Power in 3 to 4 Days, Major Fort Lee Roads Open

The mayor of Fort Lee provided an update for residents Friday on power outages and conditions in town in the aftermath of Sandy, saying the borough is “looking at three to four days” for restoration of power.

“We continue to update the borough’s webpage, but for those people without Internet, I’ve now resorted to having notices delivered to as many places as I can, including apartment buildings, municipal buildings and the community center,” Mayor Mark Sokolich told Patch Friday. “And I’m issuing these notices every day.”

He said in fact that power is “slowly but surely” starting to come back on for some residents, with four buildings and a couple of neighborhoods in Fort Lee having been restored Friday.

“So we have guarded optimism that the three to four days will be a lot less,” Sokolich said, adding that most major roads in Fort Lee are also now open.

The only roads that remain closed are those on which trees are intertwined with wires “because we can’t touch them until PSE&G confirms that they are dead,” the mayor said.

“The second PSE&G confirms that they’re not live, within five hours, we’ll have it concluded,” Sokolich said. “So if the public sees a tree blocking the street, believe me, we want to get to it, but we can’t because we’re not allowed to until PSE&G permanently kills that wire.”

Sokolich also provided a phone number he called a “phone registration system” that people can call to report storm damage: 1-800-621-3362 or TTY 1-800-462-7585.

“And within 48 hours they process this claim for damage if you sustain damage as a result of the hurricane,” Sokolich said. “Because since we are deemed a federal disaster area, we’re entitled to it.”

Sokolich’s public notice for Friday is attached to the right of this article as a PDF.