Christie: NJ Utilities Did Better Than Irene [POLL/AUDIO]

After nearly two weeks without electricity, most residents in New Jersey have power, minus those along the barrier islands.

Governor Christie says in the coming weeks he will begin to assess how well the state’s major utilities responded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“They did much better than Irene,” Christie said during a press briefing at the new joint FEMA field office in Middletown.

“They did a better job communicating with residents…for instance putting up on their websites everyday where they would be to let people know what their work plan was so you could have some expectation of when crews were coming to your town,” he said.

Christie said the response time was also significantly improved.

“There were much less power outages during Hurricane Irene, yet it took some of the utilities just as long to restore power, so just by the math they did better.”

But he cautioned about giving them a final grade just yet.

“We are going to do a very close investigation and examination of this in an after action report. All we know right now is numbers and we have no idea if those numbers are correct, we need to break that stuff down further. We also want them to come up with plans to harden their infrastructure as well,” Christie said.