By Christina Whittington, Special Writers
When Hurricane Irene roared through the communities of East Windsor and Hightstown last year, one of the areas that was heavily impacted was the downtown business district of the borough due to immense flooding from Peddie Lake.
Local downtown businesses as well as the firehouse of the Hightstown Fire Department, Borough Hall and the police station suffered major damage.
Borough Hall has remained closed since the storm, and the Police Department moved its operations to a rental property owned by Lucas Electric Co. The municipal government now works from its temporary headquarters within the Public Works building. The Hightstown Municipal Court has been operating out of Robbinsville since the storm.
Most of the downtown businesses were closed for only a few days after Irene hit the area.
While the storm hit the night of Aug. 27, 2011, by Aug 30, Allen & Stults, Hightstown Pharmacy, Masterpiece Weddings, RISE, Tavern on the Lake and Wells Fargo Bank were open and operating during regular business hours.
Ryan Rosenberg, chairman of Downtown Hightstown, reflected on the impact Hurricane Irene had to the downtown business area.
”We had some businesses that were severely impacted; our major loss was Molto Bene,” Mr. Rosenberg said.
Molto Bente, a coffeehouse, sustained major devastation at its Main Street location and in December relocated to Cranbury.
Also during the storm, both the water treatment plant went offline. Hightstown temporarily received its water in Hightstown.
However, due to the flooding in the borough, there was a boil water alert issued for several days, and Hightstown’s restaurants operated under strict supervision to insure water safety. Patrons were served with paper plates and plastic cups.
One downtown business owner who wished to remain anonymous said, “We had no problem in this business area. We were open in three weeks. We had no choice.”
Fran Palumbo, owner of Tavern on the Lake on Main Street, shared her memories of Irene.
”We had to get everybody out of here by 11:55 p.m. because the water already broke through,” she said. “We had a party upstairs that we had to physically escort them out because the water started to come in downstairs once the lake overflowed.”
Ms. Palumbo said her husband, Henry, refused to leave Tavern on the Lake. While everyone else left the building, Ms. Palumbo and her husband stayed, she recalled.
”We only had X amount of sandbags,” she said. “The Fire Department gave us 10 more sandbags, and we tried our darndest to keep the water out. We stayed here trying to protect the electricity.”
The Palumbos stayed inside the tavern all night, waiting out the storm. Ms. Palumbo recalled that around 6 a.m. Aug. 28, the Hightstown First Aid Squad showed up at the building to rescue them, but Mr. Palumbo still refused to leave.
The Palumbos did leave at 9 a.m. that Sunday when the streets of downtown Hightstown were dangerously overcome with floodwaters several feet high.
Ms. Palumbo said she received a phone call from her staff around noon that Sunday.
”They said, ‘everyone is here,’ including volunteers from Peddie School, five teachers and five students,” Ms. Palumbo said. “A lot of the patrons were here helping us with the cleanup. We were up and running in three days.”
Looking back, she said the tavern had as much as 24 inches of water inside and “got hit with water from the front and back of the building.”
Some repairs that had to be done to the building included repairing buckling floors, taking down a wall and replacing an electric panel.
”We still haven’t gotten a settlement from the insurance company,” Ms. Palumbo said. “We did as much as we could do protect the integrity . . . the building.”
She added, “I thank everybody, including the Health Department. They went out of their way to get us up and running. They told us ‘you have to do this,’ and we did.”
Volunteerism seems to have been the catalyst for the quick rebound of the downtown Hightstown business area, according to Pat Duncan, a Hightstown resident and chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, who recalled the volunteer efforts in the days following the storm.
”There was kind of a spontaneous bunch of people that came down here and started helping people clean out Molto Bente and some of the other stores downtown,” Mr. Duncan said.
”It looks like everything is recovered or close to it, except, obviously, Borough Hall,” said Downtown Hightstown’s leader Ryan Rosenberg. “The Fire Department has done a tremendous job getting that building back in order. (The firefighters) did so much work themselves, all volunteers. You can’t thank them enough for that. Borough Hall is the big variable in the downtown.”
Basem Hassan, owner of International Roasting Post located on Main Street shared his thoughts on Hurricane Irene.
”Ironically, I was not here last year, but showed up just as the renovations were finishing up from the recovery,” he said. “Hopefully, this is genuinely a once-in-a100-year-type storm but, that being said, I also hope that there are proactive measures taken in the future, such as lowering Peddie Lake in anticipation of the arrival of a hurricane and, of course, making sure all flood gates are opened.”

