A car navigates Route 35 south in Eatontown on Dec. 28 while traffic remains backed up in the northbound lane, a tie-up due to the large amount of snow remaining on the road in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 blizzard. More photos on page 14 and at gmnews.com. ERIC SUCAR staff Gov. Chris Christie is seeking federal assistance to help state and local municipalities pay the costs associated with the Dec. 26 blizzard that dumped 2 feet of snow and paralyzed parts of Monmouth County for nearly four days.
On Dec. 31, Christie sent a letter addressed to President Barack Obama indicating that 13 counties in the state, including Monmouth County, exceeded the standards required to receive federal assistance under the Stafford Act. “While New Jersey is accustomed to winter storm emergencies, the scope and intensity of this storm called for extraordinary measures requiring the deployment of numerous state, county and local resources,” Christie stated in the letter.
Pedestrians make their way along snow-clogged Route 35 in Ocean Township on Dec. 28 in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 blizzard. ERIC SUCAR staff “Portions of Routes 18, 35, 71, 195, 280 and the Garden State Parkway, some of the state’s major roadways, were shut down due to snow accumulations,” he said.
According to Christie, some 95 percent of state roads were cleared of snow by Dec. 28, and chided area mayors and officials for criticizing the state’s storm response, telling them to “buck up.”
In response to the governor’s statement, Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo announced on Jan. 1 that he would be sending a letter to Christie informing him of the borough’s efforts in rescuing stranded motorists and providing support to state workers during the storm.
“The governor is going to get a letter from me,” Tarantolo said. “It’s not going to be an attack letter. It’s going to be a letter that states the fact of what happened when the storm hit, and the action taken by the municipality, and it will all be defined in there. And quite frankly, I was offended to be put into a general category of a bunch of mayors that did not … as he said, ‘buck up,’ ” Tarantolo said.
An abandoned vehicle sits in the southbound lane of Route 35 in Ocean Township on Dec. 28. ERIC SUCAR staff “We did buck up. Quite frankly, it was a combination of things that occurred,” he said. “I understand the state could not fulfill its obligation, but the borough of Eatontown did fulfill its obligation to the residents of our town to the best of their ability, and quite frankly, by Tuesday morning, after the storm, every street in Eatontown was open.
Borough Police and Department of PublicWorks employees responded to motorists in need of assistance on Routes 35, 36 and 18, three of the worst affected state roads.
According to Borough Councilman Dennis Connelly, Eatontown police went so far as to walk through the snow to reach stranded motorists trapped on Route 18 and provide them with assistance.
Eatontown Borough Administrator George Jackson said the storm cleanup was slower than most residents were used to because township police and public works employees were tied up with rescuing motorists trapped in their cars on Routes 35 and 36.
“It was a terrible job of plowing this year on Routes 35 and 36, our two major state highways,” Jackson said.
Almost two full days after the storm, Jackson said, the highways were littered with abandoned vehicles, and plowing on the state roads was virtually nonexistent.
Because Route 35 and Route 36 are state highways, they are the state’s responsibility to clear during storm events.
As in Long Branch, Eatontown was forced to resort to using large front-end loaders to clear the heavy snow on the borough’s roadways, Jackson said.
“Some of our trucks that are normally able to handle it and plow are unable to do so because they are just not heavy enough,” he said, “so we’ve been depending on loaders to do a lot of the lead work for our plows to get them going. That slowed us down considerably.”
A total cost for the storm cleanup was still being calculated, but Jackson said, “This is going to eat a lot of the borough’s snow removal budget.
“How much, I don’t know. But I know it is going to be significant,” he said.
Long Branch Finance Director Ronald Mehlhorn Sr. said the city declared a state of emergency shortly after the blizzard began, a move that makes the city eligible for federal reimbursement of costs associated with the storm.
“That’s the thing with declaring a state of emergency: it makes you eligible for that federal aid coming from the state,” he said in a Dec. 29 interview. “That’s the main thing when you’re finance director.”
Mehlhorn said he did not yet have a total cost associated with the Dec. 26 storm, but he did say that the city has $40,000 budgeted for snow overtime work in the road department and around $30,000 budgeted for rock salt.
He said that once he has a figure, he can apply for full reimbursement, something the city has received in the past.
“Theoretically [we can get back] everything we spent,” he said. “They have reimbursed us in the past for everything.
“For the most part, we have gotten almost all of it back, depending on how severe the storm is and what the disasters are in New Jersey,” he added. “Between the police, public works and myself, we will come up with a number and hopefully we will get [back] the vast majority, if not all of it.”
While the city waits for federal funds, Mehlhorn said he has to do some creative maneuvers to pay for the snow cleanup.
“I have to project where they’re at right now,” he said. “If you don’t have money, you have to go with an emergency appropriation.
Long Branch Business Administrator Howard Woolley Jr. estimated that the city was blanketed with 24 to 30 inches of snow, and strong winds created 4- to 6- foot snowdrifts.
He said the wind and the snowdrifts made it difficult to plow.
“I think we have all our streets plowed and open,” Woolley said. “It took until this morning [Dec. 29] on some of them to get them done.
“The problem we had was the severe winds causing the drifts that made it impossible to plow,” he added. “There were streets that we just couldn’t run a plow through, the plow wouldn’t work.”
Woolley said the city borrowed five front-end loaders to supplement the two they had.
He also said that between 10 p.m. Dec. 26 and 10 a.m. Dec. 29, the city had 32 burglar alarm activations, two first aid calls, 95 disabled motor vehicle calls, 31 cars towed, as well as fallen trees and wires.
Woolley said he did not yet know the impact the storm had on the oceanfront, but the city’s first priority was clearing the streets.
“My major concern is to get the roads clear so people can get out and get to work,” he said.
He was also hopeful that the city could be reimbursed for some of the costs.
“We are hopeful that because it was a statewide state of emergency, a city state of emergency, we will be able to get some compensation back from FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency],” Woolley said. “Manning up for this and [preparing] equipment for this severe a storm was extraordinarily difficult.”
For motorists stranded on Routes 35 and 36, not all was lost. The Monmouth Mall and AMC Loews movie theater were open to take in those stuck on the roads during the storm.
According to Dan Iradi, of the Jersey Shore Chapter of the American Red Cross, the theater offered people shelter from Dec. 26 through Dec. 28.
The Red Cross, Iradi said, sponsored five shelters throughout the Shore region, including the one at Monmouth Mall as well as one at the Ocean Township Community Center and another in Monmouth Beach.
“About 200 people came in and out of those facilities over the two days,” he said.
Those who stayed at the shelters were provided with food, cots, blankets and a place to charge their cellular phones.
Motorists staying at the movie theater were treated to free movies, Iradi said.
As in Eatontown, Ocean Township was also forced to divert resources from the snow removal effort to rescue stranded motorists and move abandoned vehicles from state roadways including Routes 18, 35 and 36.
According to Finance Director Stephen Gallagher, public works employees were required to plow individual paths for police cars en route to trapped drivers, increasing the amount of time it took for local roads to be cleared.
As for the cost of the cleanup, Gallagher said it was still too early for the township to make an estimate.
Funding from the state of emergency declaration would also take months to reach the township, he said.
As a result, officials will most likely have to move surplus money from budget line items to help pay for a portion of the snow cleanup.
“I don’t think we will have a problem there as far as the cost of the storm,” Gallagher said. “But storms are pretty expensive.
“You know this follows on last year’s season, where we had essentially the same thing except not with the wind and temperatures we had this year.”