Nov 17, 2009 8:39 pm US/Eastern
Jersey Shore Damages Surveyed After Storms
OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP) ―
Emergency management officials fanned out along the southern New Jersey coast on Tuesday, cataloguing damage to dunes, beaches and property from last week's nor'easter— even as local towns tallied tens of millions of dollars of their own damage claims.
The teams, which included representatives from local, county, state and federal agencies, are documenting damages and coming up with cost estimates to forward to Gov. Jon Corzine to support his expected request for a federal disaster declaration for hard-hit areas.
"We had predicted that this storm would be one of the five worst all-time in Cape May County, and the numbers will probably reflect that," said Frank McCall, the county's emergency management director.
A quick tour of hard-hit areas turned up severe erosion in some places, with dunes suddenly dropping off 18 to 25 feet. McCall said the area's beaches had lost 150 to 400 feet of sand.
Up and down the coast, the roar of bulldozers could be heard as crews worked to push sand back into makeshift dunes, and front-end loaders scraped sand off streets and carried it back to the beach.
Officials on the tours, which included Cape May and Atlantic counties, would not give preliminary damage estimates. But local communities were already readying a staggering bill for the damage to their communities.
On Long Beach Island, for instance, Long Beach Township is claiming $31 million worth of damages along its 12 miles of coastline—excluding damage to private homes.
Beach Haven claimed $4.5 million in damages to dunes and homes.
And the storm whomped Harvey Cedars, where a beach replenishment project was to get under way last week—just as the storm hit. The tiny borough claims $5.6 million in damages from the storm.
In Ocean City, the storm inundated much of the city. The pounding surf obliterated a beach in the north end of town, washing away a 10-foot-high dune and the beach in front of it, leaving huge sand-filled fabric "geo-tubes" lying on the sand like beached whales. The synthetic tubes were used as the base for the man-made dunes years ago as part of a beach replenishment project.
In North Wildwood, the ocean flooded oceanfront neighborhoods. Atlantic County officials came up with a preliminary estimate of $16 million in damages—half of which came from Atlantic City alone.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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