• Home
• News
• Latest News

When Don Brown took off from work to go fishing last Monday, he saw hundreds of boats on the ocean, with anglers pulling in stripers and bluefish.

“Monday and Tuesday were magnificent days, busy as hell. Fantastic,” said Brown, manager of Capt. Andy’s Fish ‘N Fun dock off Amherst Avenue in Margate.

To view aerial photos showing the effects of the storm, click here

But back at on the job Thursday and Friday, with Tropical Storm Ida battering the southern New Jersey coast, Brown’s only work involved securing equipment and items that could be blown away by 47 mph gusts. There was no business.

“It’s like a faucet. You turn it off and nothing’s coming out,” Brown said.

“People come to the barrier island to spend money, and they’re not coming,” he said Friday. “And there’s a ripple effect: the guy with the motel, the guy with the coffee shop, the bait and tackle shop, and the guy selling coffee and a sandwich.”

The worst a northeaster comparable to Hurricane Ida can do is cause injury or death. After that, the impact is measured in property damage and lost shoreline. Officials said those losses will be tallied in the coming week.

A less obvious impact — but one that affects thousands of families and businesses across the region — is the damage a major storm can do to the area’s economy.

A northeaster hurts industries such as construction, fishing, farming and any business still making money on tourism. Because so much of this region’s economy is tied to recreation and the outdoors, a storm’s economic effect is more severe than in an area where manufacturing, pharmaceuticals or financial services, for example, are major employers.

“There is a greater impact here,” said Richard Perniciaro, research dean at Atlantic Cape Community College.

“We have a lot of fall events at the tail end of the tourism season. Shore communities really depend on that,” he said. “If a storm gets in the way, they can’t just move it to the next weekend.”

Millions washed away

Precise losses are impossible to estimate during and immediately after a storm. But state industry and wage data suggest the storm over two to three days probably cost this area more than $2 million in lost wages, more millions of dollars in lost business, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in government overtime costs.

And tens of millions of dollars in sand pumped onto beaches in restoration projects was lost — and it will cost tens of millions more to replace it.

Bad weather discourages visits to Atlantic City’s casinos, said Michael Pollock, managing director of Spectrum Gaming Group analysts and consultants. He said many customers drive to the casinos. A number certainly decided not to make the trip with TV newscasts in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere reporting driving rain, flooding, high winds and a battered coast.

“The industry takes a significant hit,” Pollock said. “The good news is that it’s a mid-week hit. If it continued at a serious level throughout the weekend, it would be even more significant.”

Traffic levels on the Atlantic City Expressway appear to bear out the assessment. On Thursday, 130,261 vehicles traveled the highway between the Philadelphia area and Atlantic City, according to the South Jersey Transportation Authority. That was 36,000 fewer cars than there were on a comparable Thursday a year ago, when the recession was already depressing casino visits.

The traffic count was 9,000 vehicles fewer than on the prior Thursday, Nov. 5. One reason the difference wasn’t greater: with the Black Horse and White Horse pikes closed because of flooding, thousands of motorists had no choice but to use the expressway.

Spokeswoman Alyce Parker of the four Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City properties said they were not experiencing cancellations Friday night. Other casino executives declined comment or were not available. Howard Bacharach of the Atlantic City Hotel and Lodging Association said he had not heard of any decline in weekend hotel bookings. But past revenue reports have shown declines during severe weather.

Pollock said in the past, revenue lost during a storm could be made up later because tourists usually postponed their visits, rather than abandon them entirely. With so much competition from racetrack casinos and slot parlors in the Northeast, people now are more likely to gamble closer to home, he said.

“Instead of saying they will go to Atlantic City next week, they’ll go to Chester or Yonkers,” Pollock said.

Construction stalled

Last week’s storm also had a severe impact on privately employed construction and highway workers.

“Guys lose wages on a day like this,” Assemblyman John Amodeo, a union crane operator, said Thursday. “It just sends everybody home.

“In construction, you get paid by the hours worked. And if you don’t work, you go home with nothing,” said Amodeo, R-Atlantic.

As many as 800 members of Composition Roofers Local 30 in Pleasantville work on roofing jobs in this region. Union business representative Clark Shiley said about 90 percent of the roofers could not work during the storm.

“It affects a lot of families,” Shiley said.

The Press of Atlantic City reviewed state industry and wage data on private-industry workers employed in outdoor construction, repair and highway jobs. If three-quarters could not work during the storm, then more than 12,300 workers in Cape May, Atlantic and Ocean counties were idled, losing a combined $2.4 million in wages every day not worked.

The loss to fishermen

Jeffrey Reichle, president of Lund’s Fisheries in Cape May, said commercial fishermen also lose work during severe storms.

Reichle estimated as many as 500 fishermen work from Cape May County docks, and they can earn as much as $500 per day. Some work limited days because fishing quotas limit how much they can fish. But if 375 of them lost work during the storm, at least $150,000 in wages was lost each day the boats stayed docked.

“Fishermen get paid only for the fish they catch,” Reichle said.

He said companies such as his are also affected, although they may make up lost product in future fishing trips. But if fishing boats in other states can fish while this area is being hit by a storm, it puts local companies at a disadvantage, he said.

Taxpayers will bear the costs of cleaning up damage caused by flooding and high winds and of overtime pay required to have police, fire, ambulance and emergency management workers on duty. Plus the county governments will pay overtime for emergency services.

“I called my people in at 3 a.m.,” Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson said Friday.

At least 50 municipalities in the area’s coastal counties are likely to incur overtime costs, and $5,000 is a reasonable average of costs over three days. Including county costs, overtime and cleanup in area coastal communities could easily top $300,000.

At least one group tried to see an economic silver lining in the terrible storm. Shiley of the roofers union said rain as bad as that produced by Ida will expose leaks.

“It would not leak if it never rained,” he said. “So this could create work for us later.”

Contact John Froonjian:

609-272-7273

JFroonjian@pressofac.com

_______________________________

Here's how area towns were faring as of Saturday night:

ATLANTIC COUNTY

Atlantic City - All roads and bridges open.

Brigantine - Most roads open; north end of island had some flooding.

Margate - No roads closed;  moderate flooding at the usual spots.

Ventnor - Dorset Avenue Bridge open; some side streets closed due to flooding, but all of the major roadways remained open.

 

CAPE MAY COUNTY

Avalon - The Townsends Inlet Bridge connecting Avalon and Sea Isle City remained closed after a barge broke loose and rammed it Wednesday night. The barge is still anchored nearby.

Cape May - All roads and bridges open. No reports of major flooding. Minor flooding at the usual spots.

North Wildwood - Spruce Avenue closed but bridges were open.

Ocean City - 9th Street (Route 52) causeway was open, but sections of Ocean Avenue were shut down. Flooding had some side streets closed, particularly on the west side of the island. 34th Street bridge was open.

Sea Isle City - Flooding continued, and some streets remained impassable. A state of emergency is in effect until Monday.

Wildwood - The police department reported flooding in the usual areas.

Wildwood Crest & West Wildwood - No major flooding.

 

OCEAN COUNTY

Long Beach Island - Parts of Long Beach Boulevard were inaccessable south of the Route 72 causeway during much of the day, and much of the west side of the island was under water.

Beaches along the length of Harvey Cedars were showing the effect of the storm's pounding.

Dunes were scoured, with the protective sand barriers reduced in size by between 15 feet and 20 feet. What dunes were left had 15-foot dropoffs to what remained of the beaches.

Yellow warning tape stretched across just about every street end as part of an effort keep people off the damaged dunes.

Sgt. Chuck Sahlberg of the Harvey Cedars Police Department said authorities were having a problem with people - many armed with cameras to photograph the damaged shorefront - getting too close to the dropoffs. The biggest fear was that the dune would collapse, causing people to fall on the beach or into the surf, he said.

That situation had eased as the storm declined in strength, he said, and police were just keeping an eye on people who seemed to be coming from all over the region to see the damage.

"We've have people from Pennsylvania and New York," he said.

There were no reports of significant flooding in any of southern Ocean County's mainland communities.

No comments have been posted. Be the first poster!

PressofAtlanticCity.com offers everyone the opportunity to comment on published stories. However, it is impractical for editors to screen all comments.
If you believe a comment is offensive, please click on the abuse-reporting link and your objection will be considered by an editor. We encourage participants to use their real names, but inoffensive screen names are acceptable. Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them.
Please post responsibly. Do not post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy.
Be polite. Don’t hate. Users who don’t play by the rules may be blocked from participating.

View our full terms of service and privacy agreement

Click here to report a comment as abusive.

You must login to post a new comment