FirstEnergy employees and outside utility and contractor crews continue working around the clock in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania to restore customers affected by Hurricane Irene. With flooding now subsiding, company personnel are making repairs in previously inaccessible areas, particularly in northern New Jersey.

Most of the remaining 26,000 Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) customers were expected to be restored by Saturday, September 3, with small groups of customers in some of the areas that experienced severe flooding being restored by late Sunday.

For Metropolitan Edison (Met-Ed), the remaining 4,000 customers were expected to be restored by Sunday. Some of the hardest hit areas include: Dingmans, Stroudsburg, Lebanon, Kutztown, Hamburg, Bushkill and Marshall's Creek.

All totaled, Hurricane Irene affected 920,000 FirstEnergy utility customers, including its Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec) and Potomac Edison companies. With outage restoration work completed, crews from those companies have joined personnel from other FirstEnergy utilities - Ohio Edison, Mon Power, Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, Toledo Edison, Pennsylvania Power, and West Penn Power - to continue the steady restoration progress being made in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Overall, more than 4,500 FirstEnergy employees - including line workers, damage assessors, hazard responders, call center representatives and forestry crews - have been working around the clock to restore power to customers affected by Hurricane Irene.

In addition, more than 400 line workers from outside utilities and contractors are working with FirstEnergy crews in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania now that they have completed restoration work in other states affected by Hurricane Irene.