Chris Christie Pushes For Quicker Power Restoration

Gov. Chris Christie says utility workers from other states will be pouring in to New Jersey to speed up the restoration of power.

The governor said Thursday he emphasized to state utility leaders that they needed to throw away "whatever playbooks" they had been using.

He says federal authorities are setting up temporary housing for all the out-of-state utility workers.

More than 1.7 million customers in New Jersey remain without power -- down from over 2.7 million at the height of the outages.

Christie also announced that the federal government will be providing rail cars to help NJ Transit get train service up and running. But he gave no timetable. He said 25 percent of the system's rail cars were in yards that flooded.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)