3-day storm wreaks havoc on the Wildwoods

Nov, 18-2009 8:56 pm

By CAROLE MATTESSICH
Staff Writer

THE WILDWOODS – “Mother Nature gives and Mother Nature takes away.”

So an avuncular-looking gentleman was overheard saying to a small boy Sunday as they surveyed the scene at North Wildwood’s Second Avenue beach, where Mother Nature saw fit last week to take away an entire dune system.

The “taking” took place during the three-day storm that ravaged South Jersey’s coast between late Wednesday night to early Saturday morning, Nov. 11-14.  The harsh weather was a combination of a slow-moving northeast storm and strong remnants of Hurricane Ida up from the south.

Among the four communities on Five Mile Beach, North Wildwood and West Wildwood appear to have sustained the worst damage.

North Wildwood

Throughout the weekend, a steady stream of the curious visited the beach at Second Avenue and JFK Boulevard here, for a first-hand look at the impact of last week’s storm.

Gritty sand was stuck to all floors of surrounding buildings, and sand was piled high on the streets – on the wrong side of the bulkheads meant to separate beach from street.  On the beach itself lay scattered beach replenishment equipment of the Army Corps of Engineers, whose engineers have been building a new dune system for over a month at that location.

One large water tanker sat partially submerged in sand at the top of the beach.  In the water, a stone jetty previously covered by sand suddenly had emerged in its natural form.

Protective dunes, whether natural or constructed in recent weeks, were completely flattened in the storm, with one exception:  in one area there is a massive dune whose base was eaten away entirely by the ocean, now displaying a sheer drop-off of some 15 to 20 feet.

Surveying the damage, resident Mary McCullough said she was one of those who stayed through the storm.

“It was quite scary, with the heavy winds,” she said.  “When you looked out, you’d see water all over – and I’m in the 200 block!

“I never considered evacuating, but a big rescue truck did come up and down the street, and you could wave and go on with them.”

Like many others throughout the city, McCullough visited the Second Street beach after the storm abated.

“It’s terrible,” she said of the missing dunes. “This has become the sad sightseeing place for the weekend.”

Another North Wildwood resident, “Mo,” spoke about trying to get onto the island Friday before high tide hit.

“Coming across the causeway, it was basically water to the right, water to the left, and a thin strip of road in front of me,” she said.  “All I kept seeing was that thin strip of road, and my windshield wipers frantically going back and forth.”

“We took a major hit,” said North Wildwood Mayor Bill Henfey on Monday.  “The beach at Second Avenue, with that northeast exposure, was devastated, just like Sea Isle and Strathmere were further north.

“I don’t know what would have happened if the dunes weren’t there,” Henfey added.

Henfey praised Gov. Jon Corzine for declaring the southern beaches a disaster area.  That will increase chances of federal aid, he said.

As for continued beach replenishment, Henfey planned to meet with federal officials Tuesday.  He noted that the dunes “from 21st Street down” sustained major impact, and that Inlet Beach lost a substantial amount of sand.  In addition, he said, the pond along First Avenue is substantially lower now.

“The whole beach was dramatically lowered in elevation,” Henfey said.

Other damages in the city included numerous cars destroyed in floodwaters, and flooding of low-lying houses on the city’s west side.

Among the more unusual sights during the course of the storm was that of firefighters temporarily setting up shop at City Hall.

“They’ve staged at City Hall several times before,” Henfey noted.  “You don’t want to get trapped in your own building.  We also had fire trucks up at the public works section, prepared for emergencies.”

One bright spot, Henfey said, was that at the north end of the island the city’s extensive seawall appears to have done a good job protecting the Anglesea neighborhood.

“We used to get decks washed out there in storms of any significant magnitude, and at least that’s one place we didn’t have as much damage this time around,” he said.

Wildwood

Mayor Ernie Troiano said Monday it was still too early to provide a detailed damage assessment, but it appeared that other communities, and not Wildwood, had borne the brunt of the storm.

“The surprising – and good – thing is that there are not more trees and wires down here,” he said.

Problems included some minor building damages from flooding, and wind damages to roofs, he said, and numerous cars were damaged or destroyed by flood waters.

“It doesn’t matter how many warnings we give, people still go out in vehicles,” Troiano said.

Flooding was higher than usual in the back-bay area, Troiano said, but the impact was not as bad as it would have been if the storm included sustained heavy rains for all three days.

On the ocean side, water rose about a foot high all the way up to the boardwalk, he said, but “the beach is fine.”

Troiano noted that neighboring communities were harder hit.

North Wildwood’s beach ended up serving “like the bumper on a car that can be destroyed on impact,” he said.

Troiano also noted that Wildwood Crest currently has a dune system that creates substantial ponding on ocean beaches.

“In ’99 when I came on board, we had that same problem,” he said.  “There was two-and-a-half feet of gully on the beach and a storm like this one would have left a huge area covered.  But, over time, we’ve fixed the problem.  You can’t block the natural flow of the ocean with your dunes – you have to grade dunes to the openings so that what comes in, in a storm like this, can go back out.

“We fared rather well, considering,” Troiano said of the storm’s aftermath.

Wildwood Crest

Wildwood Crest Commissioner Don Cabrera confirmed Monday that the borough’s ocean beaches sustained the main impact of the storm.

“We have the traditional storm cleanup going on – especially in parks and landscape areas, where things blew around,” Cabrera said.  “Some light fixtures are down, and lots of debris washed up all over.  But overall, it appears that the impact was minimal with the exception of our beach.”

Beach erosion exposed stormwater outfall lines that once were buried, Cabrera noted, and the dunes from Rambler Road north sustained heavy damage.

“Those are the ones with Christmas tree plantings,” he said, explaining that for the past two years the borough has picked up used Christmas trees throughout the Wildwoods and planted them in the dunes to strengthen the dune system.

“They’ve come in stronger than other dunes,” Cabrera said, “but the whole new dune area from Rambler to Cresse took a pretty good hit.”

Cabrera said there were bigger swells in the back beaches than anyone expected, and water exceeded the bulkheads at Sunset Lake almost up to New Jersey Avenue. But grading and elevations ultimately worked in the borough’s favor on the west side, he said, and waters subsided each time tides and winds recessed.

“With that wind blowing the way it did, water’s going to find its way in,” Cabrera noted.  “It felt like 200 miles per hour, but actually gusts probably were up to 50 or 60.”

Though a few cars were lost, Cabrera said, “most people realized that a bad storm was coming and they moved their cars.”  No public vehicles were lost, he said.

Cabrera said that while the borough’s beaches need improvement, damages were minimized by the existing dune system.

“There are a lot of people who are anti-dune,” he noted, “and a storm like this gives proof that dunes are an absolute necessity in a beach community.  We’re all about making sure that Wildwood Crest has the best dune system possible.”

Cabrera said the borough is bringing on a professional environmental engineer in coming months to advise on development of the dune system.

“We’re that serious about it,” he said.

One problem that will be addressed immediately, he noted, is the Crest’s beaches are so large that massive gulleys have been forming at the ocean’s high water mark.

“We have to bring the elevation of the back beaches up to get rid of that,” he said.  “Part of the engineering process will be a new dune system, understanding how to elevate the beach the right way, so water goes out as quickly as it has come in.”

Wildwood Crest Police Chief Thomas DePaul, who manages the borough’s emergency management system, could not be reached for comment Monday.

West Wildwood

Residents of West Wildwood said that while they always see flooding in parts of the borough in large storms, last week’s storm was particularly vicious.

Bob Mitros had 27 inches of water in his garage.

“My house is eight feet up, on cinder blocks, so we were luckier there,” he said.  “I only lost three things:  a mower, an air-conditioner and a weed whacker.”

Mitros left the borough purposely on Thursday morning, to avoid being stuck on the island as waters rose. He didn’t return until Saturday afternoon, and, as he drove down Glenwood Avenue on his return he saw scores of residents pulling furniture and household items out of cottages that had been flooded.

West Wildwood Mayor Herbert Frederick said the borough experienced “one of the highest tides we had in the last 15 years.”

Low-lying cottages took on a lot of water, Frederick said, but other than that damages were not as heavy as they could have been.

Part of the bulkhead ruptured at Ed Lusk Park at Bay and Glenwood, Frederick said, and “we’ve already put in for FEMA funds.”

At Merril Taggart Park at Bay and Poplar, benches and walkways were undermined by flooding, he said.

“Between the cost of the cleanup and the bulkheads, and the overtime and equipment, we’re probably looking at around $200,000,” Frederick noted.

As storm waters rose Thursday, the borough initially experienced difficulty obtaining National Guard trucks to help evacuate residents, Frederick said.  He praised Deputy Chief Walter Belles, of the borough’s police department, for obtaining equipment from the National Forest Service for use until the National Guard trucks arrived Friday.

“We had quite a few evacuations,” he said.

Commissioner Scott Golden said Monday he was receiving calls from residents who were “pretty upset” by what they perceived to be a lack of planning for managing an emergency situation like last week’s storm.

Noting that the borough no longer has access to its own Army vehicle, Golden said he would be working constructively on that, and other measures, to avoid some of the past week’s difficulties when a future storm arrives.

Also on Monday, Deputy Chief Belles said the county’s emergency management team helped him obtain Forest Service vehicles to help rescue people on Thursday.

“We got people out on the emergency vehicles through the whole storm,” Belles said.  “The longer the storm continued, the more people got concerned.

“Our residents are our number one priority,” Belles added.  “Once we got a call, one way or another we found a way to get them off the island.”

Police Officer Eric Nevil was among the emergency responders who ultimately worked with National Guard trucks to evacuate residents who chose to go.

“When they called, we were dispatched, and we would go and get them out of the houses as best we could,” Nevil said Monday.

“A lot of them were disturbed and kind of panicking, because they had never seen so much water before,” Nevil said.

“The best we could do was just try to assure them that we would get them out and to dry land,” he said.  “But it was pretty scary for them, because of how deep the water was.”

Carole Mattessich can be e-mailed at gazette@catamaranmedia.com or you can comment on this story by calling 624-8900, ext. 250.