Two Jersey Shore lawmakers are calling for greater accountability from Jersey Central Power & Light after severe thunderstorms over the weekend left tens of thousands of customers without electricity for days, with more than 20,000 still without power as of this afternoon.

As of 1pm, 20,654 JCP&L customers remained without electricity, according to the utility’s outage map, several days after Friday’s storms knocked out service to more than 200,000 customers statewide.

Assemblymen Greg McGuckin and Paul Kanitra, both Ocean County Republicans, said the prolonged outages are part of a recurring pattern they say has disproportionately affected Monmouth and Ocean counties for years.

“This isn’t a one-off storm story. This is JCP&L’s business model,” McGuckin said in a statement. “Year after year, our residents suffer some of the longest outages in the state. Ocean County has one of New Jersey’s largest senior populations, and JCP&L keeps treating four- and five-day outages during heat emergencies like the cost of doing business. It has to stop.”

The outages affected residents in multiple towns, including Lakewood, Jackson, Brick, Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights and Toms River, leaving many without air conditioning during a stretch of 100 plus degree heat indexes. Some residents also lost access to refrigerated medications and reliable phone service as device batteries drained.

JCP&L has said some customers may not have service restored until Thursday.

McGuckin also questioned how a summer thunderstorm was able to cause such widespread damage to the utility’s infrastructure.

“A thunderstorm in July at the Jersey Shore is hardly unprecedented. How is it that only JCP&L’s facilities can’t seem to handle it?” McGuckin said. “Let’s face it, this wasn’t a drone attack on our power grid, it was a thunderstorm.”

Kanitra argued the outages reflect broader failures in the state’s energy priorities and utility oversight.

“New Jersey handed out close to a billion dollars of your money to string power lines out to offshore wind farms that were never built,” Kanitra said. “Meanwhile the grid my constituents actually rely on is held together with duct tape and prayers.”

He also criticized the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, saying regulators approved only a portion of JCP&L’s proposed grid modernization plan while threatening penalties over reliability issues.

“You cannot starve the system and then punish it for starving,” Kanitra said. “The people who actually get punished are the families in Monmouth and Ocean sitting in the dark.”

Kanitra further alleged that billions of dollars collected through electric bills for societal benefits have been diverted away from electric infrastructure improvements, though those funds are established under state law for a variety of designated purposes.

JCP&L has said crews continue working around the clock to restore service following the storms, which brought strong winds and downed trees across much of New Jersey.