While most natural gas customers in Floyd-ravaged areas of theEast Coast were expected to be back on line by today – over a weekafter the hurricane struck – recovery for some in North Carolinawill be a long term project.

Public Service Electric & Gas in New Jersey expected to haveservice restored to almost all its customers by this morning. As ofFriday it had all but 1,800 of the 20,000 gas customers who werecut off by the storm and flooding back on line. Once service toelectric customers was restored by last Monday the company turned700 of its own employees and 90 from New York State utilities toworking all last week on restoring gas service, checking appliancesand relighting pilot lights, one-by-one.

At one point as temperatures dropped, PSE&G requested itsregular heating customers be patient with their service requestssince all its technicians were on flood repair duty. The utilitysuggested keeping windows and doors closed and wearing warmerclothing. PSE&G also responded to the New Jersey governor’sappeal and donated $100,000 to the New Jersey Chapter of theAmerican Red Cross to support hard-hit areas of the state.

Parts of North Carolina are taking longer to recover. Riverscrested there about the middle of last week and there was stillbetween eight and 20 feet of standing water in some parts of NorthCarolina Natural Gas’ service territory at week’s end. “There arestill a lot of problems,” an NCNG engineer said Friday. “Thewater’s going down very slowly. In Greenville a dam let go andthere is 20 feet of water over some properties. One house built on12 foot stilts has eight feet of water inside. I don’t know howmuch any of this will be recovered. Everything may have to bedestroyed because of the contamination. There were 100,000 pigs anda couple million chickens caught in the flood.” Whole towns in thearea have had to be temporarily abandoned.

Earlier in the week North Carolina Natural Gas throughput wasdown between 15% and 20%, according to Gerald Teele, NCNG seniorvice president. That included commercial and some industrialcustomers east of Interstate 95 and also power generationcustomers. Teele said about 40% of NCNG’s business lies east of theinterstate in the area of heavy flooding.

“In some areas our technicians have had to work under four feetof water to find valves and shut them off. We have shut off systemsserving about 400 customers. Others have shut down themselves whenmeters get waterlogged or pilot lights were washed out. This is nota picnic.” Teele said.

In New Jersey PSE&G personnel staffed Federal EmergencyManagement Agency/New Jersey State Emergency Centers in severalcities. In addition the utility operated its own disasterinformation centers in 12 locations including police departments,train stations, grocery stores, senior citizen centers and fastfood outlets in the three worst-hit counties. The company alertedcustomers to potential hazards such as pumping water out of theirbasements before making sure the gas is turned off.

PSE&G also warned it had received word of repair peoplegoing door-to-door, posing as PSE&G employees and asking forcash payment to inspect appliances. The utility warned customers tocheck for PSE&G’s photo identification before letting anyonein. Further PSE&G employees would not be asking for anypayment for initial assessments of damage. “Should a customer beasked to pay a fee of this service by someone who appears PSE&Gemployee, they should be cautious and call the police,” the companysaid.

Ellen Beswick

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