Official (!) Hurricane Sandy NJ thread -

[Pat]

Connie--sounds like you're okay. We plan to check out our house on Saturday.
I've heard on other FB groups that people have been able to get on island. We live two hours away and don't want to be escorted off. I phoned the Wildwood Crest police and they told me the evacuation is still in effect and not to come. A friend of a neighbor surveyed our street and said it looked alright but we want to see for ourselves.

[jmq]

We are OK but still no power here in central NJ. Have nat gas and hot water. Trees and telephone poles snapped and uprooted here 25 - 30 miles from coast. Only lost some flashing on the house which shook pretty good at height of winds. Bought a backup battery sump after Irene last year and considered but didn’t buy a generator as we are just off a main corridor between New Brunswick and Princeton and have never lost power in 17+ yrs.

Considering this was “only” a Cat 1 hurricane, I cannot imagine what a Cat 2, 3, 4, or God forbid a Cat 5 is like, and why in the world anybody near any coast or on any barrier island (especially on the north side of landfall) would attempt to ride out any hurricane.

I would imagine that a lot of folks aren’t even aware of the string of barrier islands that run along the New Jersey coastline, and how many year round and second homes are there, from the multi-million dollar ones on Long beach Island owned by Philly lawyers to the beach shacks of South Seaside Park, not to mention all of the marinas with tons of pleasure boats on the bay sides on the barrier islands.

Even though I have lived in NJ my entire life and have spent some time on each one of them, even I didn’t appreciate how fragile the barrier islands really are until I saw them from the air on a flight from Newark to Florida years ago, so in a way it is not surprising that they literally got overrun by a storm like this. Even the more northern coastal beach communities like Belmar and Spring Lake (where we go regularly) that are NOT islands got clobbered, losing their boardwalks and the like, but not like the barrier islands, where the bay met the ocean in many places.

That said, NJ rarely gets tropical storms that come in directly PERPENDICULAR to the coast and Sandy took that hard left turn as predicted. North Carolina usually shields us. The last coastal storm that was anything near this bad was the freak Ash Wednesday nor’easter of 1962, and the oldtimers are saying this was worse and more widespread than that.

Like the NJ Governor said, it is very sad that the special summer places we know and that run deep in us will never be the same. The Jersey Shore is a lot more than those embarrassing NY guidos on MTV. A couple of years ago we took a ride up and down the coast in the San Diego CA area to take in their famous beaches. Honestly, I was very underwhelmed when I compared it to some of the best places that real New Jerseyans know and love.

The images are crazy. That cut through is not supposed to be there.



Anthony – if you can take it, some more stunning aerial photos in link below. Mantoloking got hit really really bad. They had natural gas fires burning yesterday from broken gas mains. Looked like a war zone. Hope your family can re-build if they choose to do so. Most important is that they are OK.

http://photos.nj.com/njcom_photo_essays ... estru.html

[cocosmom]

Anthony,
I know you are desperate for news and our local tv station (Baltimore ) ran a video of the town your wife has a home in. The local news women has a house there also. It is very shocking but I thought you might want to look at it.
Here is the link: http://www.wbaltv.com/weather/Jayne-Mil ... index.html.

[Anthony]

So - wow. Reports now that we won't be allowed on the island for perhaps 8 months... that is hard to believe! My wife's house seemed to make it through mostly okay, but the devastation in Mantoloking is just insane.

Here are some brief videos:

http://finta.com/2012/11/lyman-st-manto ... sandy.html

And

[mindehankins]

Just a bit of good news (the house is standing). Unbelievable devastation overall, though.

[mbw1024]

Seems the news keeps getting worse over there. Now a nor'easter expected?????

[Anthony]

Here is an annotated map I am working on - I have around 50 houses as gone. Today they said they believe 100 houses are either washed away or will be eventually demolished in Mantoloking alone.

http://finta.com/2012/11/hurricane-sand ... oking.html

Sorry if I posted this already - not sure.

[Exit Zero]

Our houses in Cape May Point survived with no damage - I evacuated but my 86 yr old father stayed - ??why?? - causing much worry in the family - no serious problems - our old family home in Normandy Beach was basically destroyed. The devastation on that part of the coast is unimaginable.