All Livingston Schools to be Open on Thursday

 All Livingston schools will be open Thursday including Riker Hill Elementary School, since power has been restored, school officials announced Wednesday night.

In an email alert sent by Livingston schools Wednesday evening, district officials said classes will resume at all schools, however they warned parents that bus service will be affected by continued debris left from Saturday's nor'easter.

For a listing of impacted bus routes and other information, please visit the district's website at livingston.org. District officials also announced all field trips for tomorrow have been cancelled. Each principal will be updating school-specific information using e-mail and their schools' website.

Township Manager Michele Meade also said that power is expected to be restored to a majority of residents by tonight.

According to communication between the town and two power companies, Meade said 80 percent of the township's Jersey Central Power & Light customers and 95 percent of the township's, 8,000 Public Service Electric & Gas customers who lost power should have power restored this evening.

"The crews are everywhere," she said. "They've been actively working."

JCP&L currently has 500 crews working to restore power in the state with 1,200 forestry people among that number and a total of 4,000 people working on the remaining issues, said spokesman Ron Morano.

Meade said the township also closed its shelter at Livingston High School, but is welcoming residents who need shelter and heat to the Senior Community Center on Hillside Avenue.

She said the previous shelter housed between 15 and 40 people over the last three nights.

Livingston Mayor Rudy Fernandez said he spent time at the high school shelter over the last two nights and watched “Phantom of the Opera” with some of the residents,“The shelter has worked out as well, if not better than, what we expected."

Senior youth leisure department volunteers have run the activities there, he said. The mayor also singled out area restaurants for providing all meals at the shelter as well as ShopRite and Saint Barnabas Medical Center for making donations.

The mayor said the township is still coping with downed tree limbs, broken traffic signals and street damage from the storm.

She said clean up efforts will continue as long as needed, adding it wasn't a typical storm because of he combined weight of snow and leaves caused so many trees to fall down,"We've had thousands of trees damaged in the community. We'll have clean up. . for a while on every street."

She said normally getting an eight-inch snow storm isn't a big deal in town, but this one was different, "There really is no way to prepare. The volume of snow would have been easy to deal with had there not been leaves on the trees. Eight inches of snow is typically not a big deal for us. But this was a freak occurrence."