FARRAH MAFFAI A member of the Red Bank Fire Company gets started on the removal of a tree that came down on Spring Street in the borough during the storm last Friday night.
In town after town, the trees came down, the power went off and emergency personnel were on the move, responding to calls and clearing roads.
On Saturday, as the cleanup process began, neighbors were out cutting up fallen limbs and sharing stories of many near-disasters.
Despite the widespread devastation no serious injuries or deaths occurred during the storm.
Property damage was another matter entirely.
In Fair Haven the lights first started to flicker a little before 9 p.m. at the Chestnut Street home of Lane Cyboron, 19. When that happened, she turned off her computer and went downstairs to wait out the storm with her parents. A minute later a tree came crashing through the roof, smashing right into her bedroom.
"At least no one was hurt," said Lane’s mother, Carol Cyboron, as she surveyed the damage to her Chestnut Street home the next morning. "My younger daughter, Amanda, was upstairs but it missed her room — although it shook her up to see water pouring down the walls."
Grant Cyboron estimated that 50 to 60 gallons of water flooded into his house before they could set up buckets. "We probably caught 100 gallons more," he said.
By 8 a.m. the next day concerned neighbors and gawking passers-by were stopping by to take a look, and offer words of comfort and commiseration.
"Holy Christmas," gasped one woman when she saw the crushed roof.
"We didn’t realize how bad it was until the sun came up," admitted Mrs. Cyboron.
She walked past the battered house to a hydra-like mass of upturned roots. "The lightning must have struck the ground and traveled upward," she said, pointing out the charred and blackened route that the bolt had taken up the trunk.
Across the street, another tree lay toppled across the driveway of the Cyborons’ elderly neighbor, Mr. Jannell. "I think the same bolt of lightning might have struck both trees," she said.
All through the day, trucks and work crews rumbled up and down the streets. Brush piles grew as high as nine feet in places and severed electrical and cable wire dangled uselessly off poles or snaked across roads and pavement.
Across from Knollwood School, Sportsman’s Field was deserted. The wire fencing had been badly bent. Small branches rolled around the baseball field like tumbleweed while the top section of a nearby tree sat motionless on home plate.
Thirty-six hours after the storm things were still hopping at the Fair Haven Police Department.
"There are so many wires down I don’t have enough people to cover them," said the dispatcher.
"The town was hit pretty hard, but fortunately there were no injuries," said Sgt. Jim Kern. "We had reports of between 10 and 15 trees going through houses, as well as damage to motor vehicles. Up to 30 streets were unpassable at one time or another, due to trees being down — needless to say, it was pretty rough getting in and out of town on Saturday."
Kern said that while he expected some residents would be without power for up to four days, the police, EMS, and road crews were working around the clock to ensure that the cleanup was done in a safe and timely manner.
At police headquarters in Rumson it was much the same story. "All emergency agencies — fire personnel, DPW (the department of public works), emergency and police, along with Brooks Tree Service — responded well to the storm and its aftermath," said Sgt. Jeff Nixon. He cited downed trees and electric wires as the major causes of concern. "We had one minor injury reported — someone fell," he said.
Tim Hogan, the executive director of Riverview Medical Center, said that the hospital experienced a power outage at 8:05 p.m. on Friday, which immediately put the emergency power system into operation. At no time, he said, was there any interruption of facility services. The internal staff at the medical center quickly responded to the sporadic water problems caused by the initial downpour, Hogan said. A tree that fell in the parking lot, crashing into Front Street, was later cleared by the hospital grounds crew.
"Fortunately, we have the internal capacity to go to emergency power during any crisis," Hogan said. "But the borough was outstanding in its efforts to handle the after-effects of the storm."
He added that a number of people came into the emergency wing after losing power at home and experiencing interruption of their home-care assistance. "Several of the walk-in patients needed oxygen," Hogan said.
Over on Marion Street, the power loss was compounded by flooding. "The borough recently redid the sewers and repaved the streets in an attempt to deal with the flooding problems we’ve had in the past," said one resident. "But unfortunately, after the storm, people piled brush up and it clogged up the drains. A lot of homeowners on the south side of Marion ended up with water in their basements."
On Saturday hand-written signs were posted in store windows up and down Broad Street in Red Bank reading "CLOSED DUE TO STORM," but by Sunday people were eating pizza at Zebu’s, buying coffee at No Ordinary Joe’s and Starbucks, and shopping at Prown’s. Despite a big sign out in front of the Bon Ton saying the store was closed due to inclement weather, it seemed to be pretty much business as usual.
Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels had been scheduled to go on vacation when the storm hit. "He worked for 48 hours over the weekend before he was finally able to get away," said Borough Clerk Carol Vivona.
Bruce Loversidge, financial officer, who was stepping in for Sickels, said that Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) was working methodically to restore power, block by block. "We had a power failure in our borough facility, and we still don’t have air-conditioning," Loversidge said at noon on Monday.
He indicated that the borough’s well had experienced a problem, but that the power was now back on. "While there was never an interruption of water service, and the water supply was intact, when the pumps go down it’s always a matter of concern," said Loversidge.
"For all the damage," said one Fair Haven resident, "it was still a pretty spectacular storm to see."
Other locals seemed to agree. Armed with flashlights, they faced the driving rain, rumbling thunder, and sauna-like heat to rove the streets on Friday night and check out the drama that Mother Nature was staging.
"The hardest part of our job is keeping curiosity-seekers from getting hurt," Sgt. Kerns said.
In Little Silver, Roslyn Court took a big hit, according to Captain Peter McCue.
"The storm hit the borough widely. It was spread in different pockets," he said.
What resulted from the high winds was burning wires in trees, telephone poles which were snapped in half and power line outages which left the borough in the dark.
The borough, unlike many other towns, had no flooding, according to McCue.
Some roads remained closed through Sunday which, in some cases, left JCP&L unable to begin work to restore power lines.
In Oceanport, Councilman Gary E. Wolfe compared the damage from last Friday’s storm to the nor’easter of 1992, saying "we were in better shape this time but not much better."
The biggest difference, according to Wolfe, was that the flooding caused by Friday’s fast-moving storm was not as damaging.
"Every street was impassable but only for a very short time," said Wolfe, who added that the situation was better because the storm took place at night.
The borough’s firemen and first-aiders worked round the clock without any sleep, answering hundreds of calls related to the storm.
According to Councilman Michael Mahon, most of the damage was to electrical wires and fallen trees. The streets that seemed to get hit the hardest were Manitto Place, Seneca Place, Hiawatha Avenue and Pocahontas Avenue, according to Mahon.
Those streets remained impassable through Sunday.
Surveying the damage on Wardell Circle early Saturday, Mahon said the trees stood up pretty well; only two fell, one knocking out power lines.
"It was devastating to see the trees being knocked down on people’s homes," said Wolfe.
Wolfe said he watched lightning hit a 100-foot tree on Comanche Drive, splitting the tree in two. "One half fell to the right, the other to the left and it was a miracle that no houses were crushed in the process," Wolfe said.
The borough’s public works department suspended all regular operations on Monday to focus on tree and debris removal.
"This is not a short term project," said Wolfe. "The clean-up will last well over a month. It will be a Herculean task."
The Monmouth Park Racetrack also was hit by Mother Nature’s fury. According to George Bernett, a spokesman for the track, the track’s generators kicked on to supply electricity to the pumps, which were needed to rid the grandstands of the water filling them. Some trees fell, but the park was ready for racing by the next day and patrons were given free admission.
The northern section of Tinton Falls took the biggest hit, according to police Capt. David Travino.
"On my way in to work, driving up to borough hall was a sight," said Travino. "All the trees on the right side were knocked down and laid in a row. One of the trees hit borough hall but there was no major damage."
Although most roads in town were open by Monday, the northern section of town remained without power.
Flooding was not a huge problem for the town but was isolated in a few lower spots, noted Travino, which is usual for heavy rains.
Police officers remained on duty after their shifts ended to deal with the numerous traffic lights which were not operating. For about an hour on Friday night, the officers had somewhat of a challenging dilemma. The telephone service and radio in headquarters went down. When absolutely necessary, the officers communicated using the Mobile Data Terminal which had been installed in police vehicles.
On Tuesday morning, police Maj. Gerald Turning said an initial damage estimate in the borough was $2,355,000 and the after-effects of the storm were still being felt, as power still out in a section of town near Water Street.
"For two and a half days, all the businesses on Shrewsbury Avenue were closed and the traffic lights were out," Turning added, "Traffic was diverted in some spots, but at the intersection of Sycamore and Shrewsbury avenues and that of Route 520 and Shrewsbury Avenue Tinton Falls police directed traffic where the signal lights were not functioning." In all, Turning said, the borough’s fire and public works departments "must have cleared 50 trees off the roads, not including those on private property."
While one house was completely destroyed on Riveredge Road, luck prevailed when it came to injuries. "This giant oak tree that fell on the house hit while the man who lived there was sitting upstairs reading a book. The tree landed no more than eight inches from the guy. There were minor injuries, but, considering, he was extremely lucky. I’m hearing about a lot of near-misses."
In an unusual turn of events, the town with the least damage in the area was the frequently storm-swept Sea Bright.
According to Sea Bright Borough Council President Elizabeth Smith, "The borough escaped Friday night’s storm relatively unscathed. While Sea Bright has had its share of hard hits in the past, we were very fortunate in that we had very little flooding and our power outages were very short. We were prepared for an emergency, but fortunately we didn’t have to respond."
— Carolyn O’Connell, Jane Waterhouse and Elaine Van Develde