Storm Leaves Thousands in Dark at Home, With No Route to Work

NEW YORK — The heavy, wet snow that piled up in a hurry Wednesday toppled trees onto highways, railroad tracks and power lines, leaving thousands of homes in the New York area without electricity and many commuters unable to get to work Thursday.

A New York woman and a New Jersey man died in weather-related incidents, officials said.

Fallen trees blocked some lines on New Jersey Transit and Metro-North Railroad, shutting them down for a full day after the storm passed. Other rail lines operated on reduced schedules while crews trudged through more than a foot of snow to repair signals and untangle overhead lines.

Nearly 250,000 utility customers in New Jersey still lacked electricity Thursday afternoon, according to the governor, Phil Murphy, who was clearly irritated by the rate of repairs. Murphy, a Democrat, said state regulators would review the responses to the storm by the state’s four biggest utilities, but he singled out Jersey Central Power & Light, which still had not restored power to 17,000 customers who lost electricity in a nor’easter that hit nearly a week ago.

The governor said that deep frustration with the company’s performance had “turned to anger on my part” and he questioned JCP&L’s “corporate preparedness.” He noted that JCP&L had more than 120,000 customers without power at midday Thursday, compared with about 80,000 for the state’s largest utility, Newark-based Public Service Electric & Gas.

On JCP&L’s Facebook page, one customer complained that he was enduring the third weeklong loss of power since 2011, and he blamed the company for failing to invest enough in its network. A company spokesman responded that JCP&L, which is owned by Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., spends millions of dollars annually and had recently announced a plan to invest $357 million in its infrastructure this year.

In Putnam County, north of New York City, more than 13,000 customers — about one-third of New York State Electric and Gas’ customers there — had no electricity Thursday afternoon. Some of them had only recently regained power after losing it in Friday’s storm.

The last two snowstorms have fallen particularly hard on the suburbs north and northeast of the city, where overhead power lines are vulnerable to high winds; heavy, wet snow; and toppled trees.

After suspending service Wednesday night, Metro-North sent 146 workers out across its network to remove 69 fallen trees, using chain saws and muscle, said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. More than 31 of those trees were among the reasons that the Danbury and New Canaan branches of the railroad in Connecticut were shut down Thursday, Donovan said.

Along Metro-North’s Harlem Line, 13 power poles were damaged Wednesday between Brewster and Goldens Bridge. The poles held up the cables that carried electricity to the trains and the trackside signals.

In contrast, the Long Island Rail Road, also operated by the transportation authority, never shut down and was running a nearly normal schedule Thursday, Donovan said.

In New Jersey, service on the Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton rail lines of New Jersey Transit remained suspended all day Thursday. The railroad gradually restored service on its Main-Bergen County line after the morning rush.

“The worst things we are dealing with are the hundreds of trees that we are trying to get off our tracks and overhead wires,” said Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit. Snyder said that in some places in the western and northern areas of the state, crews had to contend with snow nearly 2 feet deep. “We’re trying to restore service as quickly and safely as we possibly can,” she said.

Murphy said he was pleased there had not been more fatalities, despite the power failures and the hundreds of cars that were stranded on highways. In Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, on Thursday morning, a man drove around barricades and across a live power line that sparked a fire that incinerated his car, killing him, the police said.

In New York, Barbara Soleski, an 88-year-old resident of Suffern, was killed when a tree fell on her in her yard at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, the Suffern Police Department reported on its Facebook page.

Col. Patrick Callahan, of the New Jersey State Police, said avoiding additional deaths or serious injuries was “a pretty phenomenal feat.” He said the state police had deployed a strike team of 50 troopers and sent out helicopters and snowmobiles to rescue stranded drivers and passengers on interstate highways.

“It was a phenomenal storm,” Callahan said. “When you have troopers on snowmobiles on an interstate highway, that’s a phenomenal storm.”

New Jersey officials said they would investigate whether utility companies had complied with rules laid down after Hurricane Sandy and other storms that passed through the state about five years ago. In their wake, regulators demanded that the companies improve their storm preparedness, including the pruning of trees near power lines to reduce the risk of failures.

“Vegetation management is always a problem,” said Joseph L. Fiordaliso, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. “We’ll revisit the vegetation-management program to see if that is being followed.”