Power Still Out for More Than 122K in Monmouth

Monmouth County currently has the largest amount of customers without power among Jersey Central Power and Light Customers across New Jersey.

As of 5:24 p.m., the power company was reporting approximately 122,609 customers without power across the county, with some residents and businesses who previously had service as the region deals with the continued effects of Hurricane Irene.

JCP&L said it is still "assessing damage" and otherwise anticipates service to be restored in the "next several days." Continued flooding, downed trees and debris were hampering restoration efforts or even increasing outages as floodwaters rise, county officials said.

Ron Morano, a JCP&L spokesperson, said all customers would be restored by next week at the latest, although the majority should be back on the grid by this weekend.

"We understand that our customers are upset because they're out of service. We ask them to please be patient with us. This is a process that takes time because the work needs to be done safely. We are working as hard as we can to return your service as quickly and safely as possible," Morano said.

remains among the most affected, with 5,439 residents out of service, up from the . More than 3,600 customers are out in Wall, while Long Branch and West Long Branch deals with 2,646 and 81 outages, respectively.

Little Silver still had 1,233 without power according to JCP&L's numbers at 12:11 a.m. Tuesday. Lt. Joe Mazza reported the north entrance to Pine Drive off of Seven Bridges Rd. was closed as of 5 p.m. Monday due to a downed power line. Police chief Daniel Shaffery recommended residents still without electricity to sign up with Two River Alert for updates.

identified Main St. and Shore Dr. as trouble spots where 52 residents are still in the dark.

The coastal communities that are among the hardest hit by the storm are experiencing widespread outages Monday, with some communities losing power as the day went on. Belmar, which had only a few hundred properties without power this morning, now has more than 2,300 homes offline. The same is felt in Manasquan, where just over 3,000 residents without power this morning has almost doubled to 6,000 late this afternoon.

Spring Lake outages have decreased to less than 2,000 from almost 2,500 this morning, while Spring Lake Heights outages have increased from 1,960 this morning to 2,278 late this afternoon.

Freehold is still the hardest hit in the county, with 14,262 outages late this afternoon.

Charlie LaPlaca contributed to this report.