PSE&G: Nearly 150,000 in Essex Still Without Power

Nearly 150,000 PSE&G customers in Essex County are still without power Wednesday morning after what officials called a "painstaking" restoration process.

Power has been restored to large parts of Newark, including Newark International Liberty Airport, Elizabeth and parts of Jersey City. Newark likely experienced the brunt of outages, with 95 percent of the city dark Tuesday. That number has dropped to 35 percent, with an assessment of substations continuing Wednesday.

"We have an enormous amount of work ahead of us," said Ralph Izzo, chairman and chief executive officer of PSE&G.

Hurricane Sandy, said another PSE&G official, was "similar but a much more serious storm than Irene." 

There were more than 255,000 Essex County PSE&G customers without power on Tuesday. At the peak of outages, 1.5 million PSE&G customers were in the dark.

Currently, 900,000 in New Jersey are without electricity. Restoring power to 10 hospitals and water utilities are top priorities for PSE&G, officials said.

Officials said 163,000 in Bergen County and 60,000 in Passaic County are still without electricity.