Whether you call it a hurricane, super-storm or another name, Hurricane Sandy blasted New Jersey. Everybody from Cape May to Highpoint felt her effects and everybody has their story. There are stories of survival, heroism, sadness, happy endings and unfortunately stories of scams, thievery and people taking advantage of the storm victims.
My wife, daughter and I drove through Union Beach, NJ, one of the hardest hit communities, on Tuesday to check on the house of a friend's parents. A few streets were blocked by emergency and rescue personnel. Other streets were blocked by debris. At the risk of using a cliche, the town looked like a war zone. House after house were destroyed, severely damaged, flooded, reduced to ruble or simply gone. It was very hard to look but at the same time I was fascinated at the level of destruction from wind and water.
Some people were clearing out their house of items ruined, others were cleaning up the debris in their yard, others were assessing the damage and others were just walking around in disbelief. I felt as if everybody thought I was driving through just to gawk at them, and believe me, I know the feeling; I went through a flood several years ago and the level of damage was nothing compared to this storm but people drove around to gawk and I did not like it. But we were not there to gawk but to check on a house.
We finally got to the house. I parked and opened the door and the first thing I noticed was the stench of home heating oil. As I stepped out of my truck I realized the street was covered in mud, wet sand and oil. It had to be about an inch thick and still slowly flowing back toward the bay.
At first glance the house seemed to be sound so I walked around the corner (the house is on a corner lot) then saw the side yard was still flooded. I also noticed the above ground pool was collapsed. What I didn't notice right then was that the pool had moved about 10 feet and slammed into the fence from the force of the storm surge. I walked back around and that's when I noticed the oil tank lying on it's side on the ground.
My wife called her friend and told her what we saw. The following Saturday her friend, her husband and her parents were going to be at the house trying to salvage what they could so we all decided to go and help. This time driving through the town, every house we passed had a mountain of the owners possessions piled at the curb. There were beds, dressers, tables, bags of clothing and other items piled high.
When we got to the house there were structural engineers surveying the houses in the area and we noticed 3 of them had red stickers on them; 'Deemed Uninhabitable'.It was a very sad sight.
We helped them salvage as much as we could fit in the trucks. Then turned our attention to the half full oil tank. It took a couple of times but we got it upright. We then had to brace it due to one of the legs breaking.
As we were walking around the first floor of the house, I got a sense of how high the water was. On top of the counter and range were puddles of water and sand and debris. They estimated about 7 feet of water on the first floor of the house.
After we were done I couldn't help but think how good it will feel to go home, take a shower and sit in my chair and relax with a beer. Then I thought about all the people who lost everything and won't be able to relax for quite some time. I wish I could do more for them and other people. If we all do just a little to help somebody, it will go a long way.
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