Residents in Margate, Longport, Ventnor and parts of Atlantic City should expect to be without electricity for up to 6 hours Friday afternoon, authorities tell NBC 10's Jersey Shore Bureau.
The lights went out just before 2:30 p.m., impacting approximately 19,000 customers of Atlantic City Electric on Absecon Island in Atlantic County. Initially the outage was set for 10 a.m., but the utility company had to delay it because of a car accident involving a transmission pole that feeds an electrical substation.
The outage is the result of emergency repairs to electrical equipment damaged during Thursday evening's storms, police said.
Power is expected to be off for 4 to 6 hours.
All of Margate, Longport and Ventnor is affected, as well as the Chelsea and Chelsea Heights sections of Atlantic City.
Atlantic City set up an information hotline: 609-347-5313 and the All Wars Memorial Building at New York and Adriatic Avenues is serving as an emergency cooling station. The city's also urging residents to take the following precautions: get to airconditioned facilities, store food in coolers if possible, wear light clothing and drink plenty of fluids.
