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UPDATE (5:30 p.m.) Bergen County sustained $20 million in flood damage that will be covered by federal disaster funds, county officials said today. “We’re ahead of this. The worst is over,” County Emergency Management Coordinator Dwane Razzetti reassured a countywide conference call of local officials anxious about more Passaic River flooding. Executive Kathleen Donovan also corrected “pure sensationalism” media reports. READ MORE…
Fortunately, it was nothing serious.
The good news in Bergen County is that both the Hackensack and Ramapo rivers are continuing to recede. The bad news: We’re in for a mini heat wave, with temperatures rising today and hitting the mid- to upper-80s tomorrow.
Lyndhurst, Lodi, Rutherford, Elmwood Park — all are dealing with widespread flooding. The most severe concentration of both flooding and blackouts in Bergen County is in Bergenfield, Dumont and New Milford, where the tide knocked out PSE&G substations.
The number of people who have had to relocate is in the thousands, and the utility company says it may not be able to restore full power until Sunday.
Bergen County Emergency Management Coordinator Dwane Razzetti warned about this during a conference call Sunday with mayors, police chiefs and others from throughout the county, as well as state Sen. Loretta Weinberg.
Reports from New York were that New Jersey would become swollen with a tremendous amount of runoff, Razzetti said. No matter how beautiful the weather was today, he warned, tonight into tomorrow could become a nightmare as big, if not bigger, than the weekend storm.
Indeed, the Ramapo crested at 16 feet earlier — double the flood level.
It’s the reason why search and rescue teams were deployed today and tonight along either bank of the Passaic, which crested at 14.06 feet, more than twice its flood level.
(If you’re curious: The Passaic River’s all-time flooding high was 17.5 feet, on Oct. 10, 1903; it hit 11.81 feet this March and 11.97 a year earlier).
It will recede to only 12 feet or so by morning and won’t show any significant drop until tonight, according to the USGS. However, it won’t dip under flood level until the weekend, at the earliest. Meanwhile, the Ramapo and Pompton rivers in Pompton Plains were several feet above their flood stages just after midnight.
Route 46 remains shut down from Clifton to Denville. The National Guard has also been deployed in Fairfield and other towns that are in states of emergency. Areas of Little Falls and Woodland Park (West Paterson) were evacuated earlier.
Road closings in Paterson have become too numerous to mention. The West Broadway, Temple Street and Haledon Avenue bridges are virtually impassable. Homes and businesses along and near Routes 46 and 23 in Wayne have been flooded. Little Falls has big water problems. So do Hawthorne and Lincoln Park.
YESTERDAY’S STORY: Look out, Bergen: Flooding, outages will get worse
Massive power outages and flooding will likely continue past midnight tonight, as New York runoff swells the already overflowing Hackensack River, Pascack Brook and area reservoirs, making an already bad situation much worse, Bergen County leaders told mayors and other government officials during a 15-minute emergency conference call this afternoon. READ MORE….
In Bergen County, many local officials took the warnings seriously. Those who didn’t need to be told included Dumont Mayor Matthew McHale, who kept residents updated via his Facebook page. Today, McHale opened Borough Hall to those who needed to recharge. Portable devices, that is.
The “Dumont Recharging Center” will remain open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, tomorrow and Thursday (and longer, if necessary) at Borough Hall, where residents and business owners can charge cell phones, iPods, laptops, and other portable devices.
“Outlets are available in the main corridor, the Executive Conference Room, and Council Chambers,” McHale said. “If arriving prior to 4:30 p.m., please check in with the Borough Clerk’s office; if after 4:30 p.m. check in with the Dumont Police Department front desk located on the ground floor.”
It was a small measure of solace, given how upset he, borough residents and business owners are with PSE&G. Dumont, Bergenfield and New Milford combined easily have more than 10,000 customers without power, according to the utility.
To understand how dramatic that number is, consider that the rest of Bergen County — combined — has fewer than 50,000.
McHale has advised residents to stay with family. Police are out and about, protecting the community.
He also provided a list of: What to do — and what not to do — during a blackout
McHale added a footnote: “It’s not lost on me that those residents [who] need to read this can’t because they don’t have power to get to the Internet. I ask those resident who do and are reading this to call their friends and neighbors who can benefit from this announcement. Thanks!”
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