Five days after the storm, Morris County is still counting the cost — and asking why Trenton didn't declare an emergency

A fast-moving line of severe thunderstorms tore across New Jersey the evening of Friday, July 3, and Morris County absorbed some of the worst of it. Wind gusts reached the high 60s in miles per hour across parts of the region, hail fell in spots, and by Saturday morning downed trees and snapped utility poles had left more than 51,000 county electric customers without power — among the highest county totals in the state, alongside Monmouth County to the south.

Five days later, the acute phase of the crisis has passed. Most customers have their power back. What remains is a slower-burning dispute over how the state responded while people were still in the dark — and whether that response met the moment.

The damage, county by county

The hardest-hit Morris County municipalities were Hanover, Randolph, Roxbury, Mount Olive, Morris Plains, Mendham Borough, Mendham Township and Mount Arlington, according to utility outage data reported in the days after the storm. JCP&L spokesman Chris Hoenig described the storm's footprint as running the length of the utility's entire New Jersey service territory, from north to south, with very few areas left untouched.

Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty said the damage reminded him of Superstorm Sandy, with downed limbs and branches on nearly every street in town. In Morris Township, a tree punched through the roof of a home on Ferndale Avenue. Roxbury police reported trees falling on homes and vehicles with people trapped inside, and closed a portion of Route 46 East; the department asked residents to reserve 911 calls for genuine emergencies given the volume of calls coming in. NJ Transit's Morris & Essex and Gladstone Branch lines were both suspended for several days; more than 50 trees came down along the Morris & Essex line alone, and the Gladstone Branch did not fully reopen until Tuesday, July 7.

Ash trees — already weakened by an invasive beetle and only partially removed from utility rights-of-way — were a recurring factor in the downed lines, Hoenig said, describing it as a problem JCP&L has worked aggressively but not completely to address.

Restoration: from 51,000 to nearly zero

Restoration moved in stages typical of a storm this size. By Sunday morning, roughly 26,000 Morris County customers remained without power, with JCP&L warning that some pockets might not see service back until Thursday, July 9. By Monday, the utility's statewide outage total had fallen to about 36,700 customers across Hunterdon, Monmouth, Morris, Sussex and Union counties combined. By Tuesday, JCP&L told reporters the vast majority of remaining customers would see power back that day, with a small number extending into Wednesday — consistent with the utility's own public timeline, which projected substantial completion by Wednesday, July 8.

JCP&L said it deployed more than 1,700 personnel to the response, including over 800 line workers and 500 forestry professionals, with contractor crews arriving from as far away as Tennessee and Florida working 16-hour shifts. More than 100 utility poles were snapped by the Friday storm alone, with additional pole damage reported the following night.

Hoenig also pointed to storm intensity itself: "If you compare this to a decade ago, the intensity of the storms that we are seeing has certainly gotten stronger."

The dispute: did Trenton move fast enough?

The most contested question to come out of the storm isn't about the utilities — it's about the governor's office. As of Sunday night, three days after the storm hit, Governor Mikie Sherrill's administration had not declared a state of emergency, a step the governor has taken for prior winter storms this year. Instead, the state activated its Emergency Operations Center, which state officials say was already running to support security operations tied to World Cup events in New Jersey and pivoted to storm response without a separate declaration.

That distinction has become a flashpoint. Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, a Republican whose district includes part of Morris County, has been the most vocal critic, accusing the administration of a "dereliction of duty" for not declaring an emergency and calling the administration's stated reasoning "preposterous" in a call with the governor's staff, several mayors, and county officials. Fantasia has argued that a formal declaration would expedite mutual aid and position the state to seek federal disaster assistance if local and state resources prove insufficient — a point of particular concern, she has said, for rural residents whose well pumps and septic systems depend on electricity.

Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn, R-Monmouth, raised a related concern: that restoration in senior communities was not being adequately prioritized, and that towns weren't getting enough advance notice when utility crews were en route. She also said she was surprised Sherrill had not personally toured the damage, contrasting it with the governor's posture during winter storms earlier in her term.

Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo raised the state of emergency question in writing, in a letter to the governor's office, and separately noted that his township's finances are already strained — he said Roxbury lost $1.8 million in tax revenue after a warehouse once slated to house an ICE detention facility was sold, a loss that storm-related overtime costs will now compound.

The governor's office, for its part, has said its Office of Emergency Management maintained daily coordination with all 21 counties throughout the response and opened a Damage Assessment Portal to document storm impacts for potential federal resources. Sherrill visited the Morris County Office of Emergency Management and a JCP&L staging operation in the county on Sunday, July 6 — a visit Fantasia and Potillo said was not publicly announced in advance and that they learned of only informally, with Potillo noting he was not among the invited officials.