By Walter Elliott
ESSEX – Many people in the “Local Talk” area joined millions of others elsewhere in the Northeast and as far out as the Gulf Coast in salvaging what they can from former Hurricane Ida since Sept. 1-2.
First responders had mostly gone from rescue to recovery by Friday, Sept. 3. They are still looking for four missing New Jersey residents as of press time – including a Seton Hall University freshman who may have been swept into McDonald’s Brook underground culvert in Passaic.
Few people – with all the pumping out, throwing out, drying out and salvaging going on – were able to take the Labor Day holiday or weekend off.
Furnishings and debris, including ruined drywall and ceiling panels, began piling up on curbsides to bulk trash day levels Friday, Sept. 2 Newark, East Orange, Orange, South Orange, Maplewood, Montclair have since been holding special pickup runs.
Bloomfield has meanwhile waived zoning and construction permit fees for storm emergency work through Dec. 1.
Many were also counting their losses in terms of possessions and time for work, school and/or worship. A few were still waiting to get back to their dwellings as of press time.
The USPS Irvington Branch Post Office, for example, remains closed as of press time. The branch’s basement was flooded by the adjacent Elizabeth River.
The Maplewood Memorial Library will remain closed, its basement flooded by the nearby Rahway River East Branch. The South Orange Public Library, about two blocks uphill of that stream in that village’s center, was only closed Sept. 2 (See Town Watch for related Maplewood library story.)
Two public school districts have postponed welcoming their students to as far as Sept. 13.
South Orange-Maplewood Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor, citing damage to its school buses and some of its 11 buildings, as “tentatively” reset its First Day of School to Sept. 13.
Montclair Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds has meanwhile been aiming to “be open and ready for students on Sept. 9.” MPS staff have been repairing damage in Montclair High School, Bradford and Hillside schools done by the Third River.
Some stage and movie theaters – including SOPAC’s main stage and Montclair Film – also had to postpone their re-opening plans to at least Oct. 1.
Bloomfield High School’s Sept. 3 game against Nutley moved to the latter’s Owens Park after William Foley Field was awash. East Orange Campus High School played host to Montclair after a special game slated for Rutgers’ SHI Stadium in Piscataway was washed out. Columbia High School likewise hosted Morristown at Maplewood’s Underhill Field.
Some remain in mourning. There have been 97 people declared dead in Ida’s wake, as of Sept. 7, from Venezuela to Connecticut. New Jersey has 27 deaths – the highest of the reporting nine states.
Four of those deaths happened in Essex County – with two identified in “Local Talk” territory.
Bloomfield police officers responded to the side of an Ampere Parkway house at 11:30 p.m. They said they found Aventino Soares, 58, lying in a pool of water with an electrical cord in his hand and across his chest.
BPD, presuming that Soares had been electrocuted while plugging in a generator, called Bloomfield firefighters to shut off power. (Soares’ obituary appears elsewhere in this edition.)
Maplewood Police Chief Jim De Vaul said his officers found the body of Patrick Jeffrey, 55, around 658 Ridgewood Rd. at 7:12 a.m. Sept. 2. They and fire rescue crews had searched for him from when his wife reported him missing 9:30 p.m. Sept. 1 until the storm got too bad at 11 p.m. and resumed at dawn.
It is believed that Jeffrey had been swept downhill and west some 6,000 feet. from his Maple Terrace home. Jeffrey was last seen alive clearing debris from storm drains at 8:30 p.m. He was declared dead at the scene.
Gov. Phil Murphy had ordered all flags to be lowered to half-staff Sept. 8-10 in memory of then 27 dead and four missing.
Most people around here knew Ida would be serious once she made landfall south of New Orleans 2 p.m. Central Time Aug. 29. The tropical depression had built into a Category 4 hurricane, packing 150 mph winds, after skirting Venezuela and clipping northwest Cuba.
Ida hit New Orleans 16 years to the day that the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina struck. The post-Katrina levees, one hand, held up. There were, on the other hand, nearly one million people without electrical power and at least five people dying in senior citizen homes.
PSE&G and NJ Task Force One sent several work crews and emergency responders to help out metropolitan New Orleans Aug. 28-Sept. 1.
Few here knew, however, how bad Ida would be.
Ida dropped to a Category 2 Hurricane, with 105 mph winds, while it tracked north and became a tropical depression while it arced eastward over the Ohio River Valley. Ida, however, still carried warm and humid air when it met up with cooler and drier air from the north over Pennsylvania.
The National Weather Service, on Aug. 29, labeled Ida an EF2-level storm with heavy thundershowers and potential tornado generation. It also declared flash flood watches for New Jersey and, for the first time, for New York City.
NOAA, on Aug. 31, issued a high risk of excessive rainfall of over six inches.
Rain, which arrived in Maplewood and West Orange at 5:55 p.m. a few minutes before the Passaic River and Newark Bay reached high tide. The ground was saturated after Tropical Storm Henri Aug. 22 and a wet August. The incoming rain had nowhere to go.
The intensity built to more than three inches an hour. Newark Liberty International Airport recorded a record 3.24 inches in an hour; New York City’s Central Park logged 3.15 in. an hour.
EWR would register 8.10 inches in six hours, making Ida a one-in-a-500-year rainstorm. Central Park recorded 6.67 in. the same period.
Many streams that drain into the Passaic, Rahway and Elizabeth rivers began overflowing their banks in low-lying areas by the 9 p.m. hour. They include:
· Peckman River; West Orange to Passaic River
· Third / Yantacaw River; Montclair, Bloomfield, Belleville to Passaic River
· Second/Watsessing River: West Orange, Orange, East Orange Bloomfield, Belleville to Passaic River
· Tony’s Brook: Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield to Second River.
· Wigwam Brook: West Orange, Orange, East Orange to Second River
· Nishaune Brook: Montclair, West Orange to Tony’s
· Parrow Brook: Orange Culvert
· Rahway River East Branch: Orange, South Orange, Maplewood, Millburn
· Elizabeth River: East Orange, Newark, Irvington
· Lightning Brook: Maplewood, Irvington, Union to Elizabeth River
Flooding had also occurred among depressed storm sewer catch basins and under highway and railroad underpasses. Sanitary sewers also backed up and overflowed sinks and toilets.
Those who had basements and/or first floors – whether for parking, storage and/or living — were particular targets.
The flooding also affected Newark Liberty International Airport, forcing its traffic control tower to close 9-9:40 p.m. Videos surfaced of Terminal B’s baggage area and ground floor level being awash.
(Noon Sept. 2.: Newark South Street between Pulaski and Mulberry streets, First and Bloomfield avenues between north 10th and 12th streets, 82 Halstead St., Central Avenue and Duryea Street, parts of Frelinghuysen Avenue and US Rt. 22.)
The Newark Department of Public Safety said its firefighters and police officers rescued 485 people overnight.
The 485 rescued included 215 passengers and crew of NJTransit Northeast Corridor Train No. 3881 when it had lost electrical power across from Toler Place. It took NFD firefighters and an NJTransit diesel locomotive crew eight and a half hours to get the train to the safety of Newark Airport Station.
No. 3881, which left New York Penn Station and was to finish at Trenton 9:16 p.m., stopped a half-mile short of its scheduled 8:08 arrival at EWR.
Firefighters, who arrived at 8:30, found 3881 standing on Track 5 in up to five feet of water. NFD decided to leave riders on the train and await help from another NJT locomotive.
One diesel-electric locomotive, dispatched from the Meadowland Maintenance Center in Kearny, turned back when the tracks were flooded by the Hunter Interlocking Tower across from Bigelow Street. A diesel locomotive pushed the train set to the station platform at 5 a.m. Sept. 2.
NJTransit had meanwhile suspended all commuter rail line service except on the Atlantic City Line. The suspension was in part because corridor owner Amtrak reported downed power wires between Princeton and Trenton.
Amtrak also suspended its entire Northeast Corridor and Empire Service through Sept. 2.
NJTransit suspended all three light rail lines; Newark Light Rail’s Broad Street Extension, with its Mulberry Street Tunnel, was the last to resume. Buses were running Sept. 1 with up to 60 min. delays due to flooding and detours.
PATH’s Newark Penn Station-World Trade Center route was suspended overnight. Its Harrison Station reopened once waist-high water on Frank Rodgers Boulevard had receded Friday afternoon.
Those learning what mass transit was running Thursday morning also saw footage of the Garden State Parkway over East Orange’s Remsen Street overpass. They saw NJ Turnpike Authority equipment draining catchbasins and pushing away some 24 abandoned cars. Local northbound traffic was detoured off Exit 147, near the Bloomfield border.
The GSP, that morning, was closed between Exits 142 and 148. Interstate 20 was closed between the Parkway and West Orange’s Pleasant Valley Way. Interstate 78 was closed between Broad Street Summit and Route 82 – Morris Avenue.
Belleville Mayor Michael Melham said that residents at the Bridgebrook Condominiums lost 200 of their parked cars.
Newark was left with 185 abandoned vehicles on its streets They included Federal Express truck was seen vacant on Northbound Rt. 21-McCarter Highway before Bridge Street.
Flooding also happened at several highway exits including GSP Exit 150-Hoover Avenue Bloomfield and US Rt. 1&9/NJ Rt. 21 at Newark’s Broad Street.
Several parishioners at Belleville’s St. Anthony of Padua gathered around one of their cell phones after their morning Mass. The photos showed what the holder said was the remains of a lightning strike at Bloomfield’s Broad and Bay streets’ intersection. That intersection also suffered from water streaming down from Glen Ridge’s Bay Street and a rising Third River.
Other flooded areas included Bloomfield Towne Centre, Nutley’s Franklin Avenue and Harrison Street, East Orange’s Grove Street at Hoffman Boulevard and Central Avenue/Duryea Street and Ferry and Chapel streets in Newark.
A “Local Talk” delivery crew found streets that crossed the Rahway River East Branch and/or went under the NJTransit Morris and Essex Line’s overpasses partially or fully closed from South Orange Village and through the Orange-West Orange Valley.
Mud, mixed perhaps with sewage and other contaminants, caked street corners and curbs. It covered sides of cars parked along South Jefferson Street from Central Avenue and Glebe Street.
Restaurant staff at Bella Italia, 535 Central Ave., were spraying and washing off the residue the premises. It’s owner, Sal Granata, said it was the worst flooding the restaurant had suffered in its 40 years.
The “Local Talk” delivery crew also found, on observation at East Orange’s Springdale Avenue and Orange’s Thomas Boulevard, how a few feet of elevation made a difference.
A staff member at the Coppergate senior citizens apartment, 780 Springdale, said flooding from Wigwam Brook left the building operating “at 60 percent.” Its telecommunication units and its elevator bank were down.
All appeared normal however across the street at the Brookside, 777 Springdale. The two Orange senior citizen buildings on Wigwam’s other side also appeared to be unaffected.
The delivery crew also found more Ida-related power outages in East Orange.
Residents outside of Heritage House Apartments, 50 So. Munn Ave., said that their electrical and elevator systems had been out since the overnight.
Central Avenue between South Munn Avenue and Halsted Street had its traffic light signals out. Most of the businesses along the county road’s way were also dark. The East Orange Police Department was duly informed; power to most places was restored same time Sept. 3.
PSE&G, 6 a.m. Sept. 2, reported 68,000 customers without power across its territory – half of which were in Essex County. The utility, 24 hours later, cut those backlogs in half.
PSE&G reported power outages affecting 2,100 households or 24,000 people, in Newark alone. There were 70 households concentrated along Mapes Avenue and Hunterdon Street in the South Ward’s Weequahic section.
Members of Bloomfield Ner Tamid celebrated a miracle along with their Rosh Hashanna/New Year’s services Sept. 7-9. Rabbi Marc Katz said that the custodial staff worked Sept. 2-3 to limit what water damage had seeped into the synagogue. Contractors were replacing the temple’s roof, “when the rain got in the way.”
