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Federal officials begin to assess damage from coastal storm in southern New Jersey
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OCEAN CITY — Local officials here say they expect Gov. Jon S. Corzine to ask for federal disaster assistance in the wake of last week’s coastal storm, which caused an estimated $175 million in damage to shore towns in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties.
The staggering figure caught the attention of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which on Tuesday toured Atlantic and Cape May counties to begin its own arduous damage assessment.
In fact, FEMA’s assessment of the damage, and not what towns have estimated or reported, is the only one that really matters.
Lt. Bill McDonnell, a spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Management’s Recovery Bureau, declined to comment on the municipal estimates that have been released so far.
“I don’t want to confirm all the damage figures,” he said. “We’re still in the infancy on this.”
The federal government has not declared a disaster in New Jersey in more than two years, since a fighter plane’s countermeasure flare ignited a wildfire at the Warren Grove Gunnery Range. The blaze caused widespread evacuations in Ocean and Burlington counties.
Corzine on Sunday declared a state of emergency for six counties, which is a step toward obtaining a presidential emergency declaration.
Storm damage of $8.3 million or more is needed to trigger a federal disaster response, Cape May County Emergency Management Director Frank McCall said.
Ocean City, which lost an estimated 7 million cubic yards of sand on its beaches, initially pegged damage to its island at $89 million but backed off that estimate Tuesday, saying it was probably too high.
Towns elsewhere reported similarly large losses: $31 million in Long Beach Township, $15 million in Sea Isle City and $8 million in Atlantic City.
FEMA officials divided into three teams to survey damage to beaches, public property and private homes and businesses.
The teams use a complicated formula to determine whether the six counties in southern New Jersey sustained enough damage to qualify for federal assistance.
State Office of Emergency Management spokesman Nick Morici said that could take more than a week. In the meantime, he said nobody wants to raise any false hopes that federal money is coming.
But McDonnell warned that the state’s financial distress could make it hard for New Jersey to come up with significant recovery dollars on its own.
And places like Ocean City are counting the months to Memorial Day, when tourists will be coming back to the island to enjoy its beaches.
Mayor Sal Perillo said he was confident the beaches would be restored by then.
Even before last week’s storm, Ocean City was planning a $17 million federal beach-replenishment project with Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, slated to begin this spring. The city met with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday to discuss the timeline.
Perillo said vacationers should have no qualms about booking summer rentals in Ocean City.
“Tell them not to worry,” he said. “You come back in the spring and you’ll be surprised by what you see.”
Meanwhile, homeowners and business owners should file claims for storm damage through their insurance companies and notify their local emergency management offices, McCall said.
This notification will help them get reimbursement if federal grants become available.
“Do whatever you need to do to get your business back on its feet,” McCall said.
He and the FEMA officials surveyed the decimated beach off East Atlantic Boulevard in Ocean City on Tuesday as distant surfers took advantage of the wind-whipped swells. The storm pushed more than a foot of sand onto the road while flood waters hurled giant chunks of broken asphalt onto neighbors’ yards and driveways.
“I don’t know where this came from,” neighbor Barbara Harris said of broken pieces of road that littered her yard. The asphalt was probably ripped from nearby metered parking lots.
The storm swept away most of the grass-covered dunes that fronted her home. The storm also exposed the enormous sand-filled geotubes that now sit like marooned whales on the beach.
Harris said the city should have been more forceful about protecting its dunes from tourists who trod over them. She said she gave gentle reminders to children about not digging in the dunes with their sandcastle buckets.
Despite the storm’s fury and forecasts of another northeaster later this week, Harris said she has no qualms about living so close to the Atlantic Ocean.
“Now I just wish they’d bring my beach back,” she said.
In Atlantic County, FEMA teams surveyed damage to dune systems on Bay Avenue in the West Atlantic City section of Egg Harbor Township.
“This is pretty devastating,” FEMA official Bob Kerek said.
Kerek and others in the team took photographs and measurements of about 2,000 feet of dune flattened by five successive high tides.
The teams will finish their assessment in Cumberland, Ocean, Monmouth and Burlington counties, where the damage was not quite as extensive.
Contact Michael Miller:
609-463-6712
Contact Thomas Barlas:
609-272-7201
Posted in OCEAN | BREAKING | ATLANTIC | CAPE MAY on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:15 am Updated: 10:35 am.
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