North Jersey residents who have spent the last two months dealing with the aftereffects of Hurricane Irene once again found themselves with no electricity and another sloppy mess to clean up.
Residents in towns such as Saddle Brook, Westwood, Wayne and Hillsdale — still recovering from one storm — are clearing felled branches and trees from their yards, this time as snow from the weekend’s uncharacteristic storm continues to melt, flooding their backyards.
Dan Atkins of Westwood’s Harding Avenue has not had electricity since Saturday afternoon. Extensions cords — plugged into a gas-powered generator located on his back deck — snake their way throughout his entire house, providing power to the second floor and basement. Pools of water have collected in his backyard.
“This has literally been the year from hell,” Atkins said.
His house, which flooded in late August, is still undergoing repairs from the damage wrought by Irene and four other devastating storms this spring.
“We got hit in March and then again in April. Then we flooded in June, before Irene showed up. And now this. I feel like this block is cursed.”
In Saddle Brook, along Saddle River Road, snapped branches and splintered tree stumps could be found in every other front yard. A tree landed on one resident’s Honda Civic, downing power lines and smattering the car’s rear windshield.
Inside Linda Castiglia’s Rochelle Parkway home, which flooded during Hurricane Irene, there is no electricity. The air inside the house is freezing. Over the weekend, a large branch broke away from a tall oak, ripping the power lines from her home.
Castiglia said the wires spent much of the weekend in the street, until they became snagged on the front of a passing car.
“The car just tore the wire straight from the house,” Castiglia said, staring at the cable, which now sits in her yard. “We had more than four feet of water in our basement after the hurricane. We had to get a new furnace, a new water heater. We didn’t have power or cable for a week. Now this?”
Castiglia, who had to move her ailing mother to a relative’s house both during Irene and for this storm, said all weekend, she could hear branches and chunks of snow “plopping” on her roof.
“What’s upsetting to me is, you drive around town, and you don’t see one public service truck — not one,” Castiglia said. “Same thing happened with Irene. Public service is saying there are trucks out there working, but I don’t see them. This is ridiculous.”
Down the street, Jerry Hernandez, Henry Ballone, and Robert Wood — whose homes flooded during Hurricane Irene, causing thousands of dollars in damage — were talking outside about generators.
“We’ve been told we won’t have power until Friday,” Hernandez said. “If that’s true, I need to do something about it.”
All three men said their attempts to purchase generators were unsuccessful Monday, as most of the stores they visited were sold out.
“It’s another huge mess for us to clean up,” Wood said, adding the branches that fell on his property missed clipping his home. “It’s nature. What can you do? Every once in a while, nature rears it’s ugly head and you just deal.”
Toppled trees and power outages added stress for Wayne residents working to repair their homes in Hurricane Irene’s wake.
“I’m trying to put my house back together,” said Kevin Dawson of the Old Wayne section of Wayne Township. “We’ve had five floods inside our houses this year, and now we have no power.”
Dawson had planned to install new stairs into his bi-level home on Monday, but the house has been without power since Saturday afternoon and his often-used back-up generator died overnight Sunday. He spent $900 to buy a new one first thing Monday morning.
But loss of power and downed tree limbs were not the only worry for Dawson and his neighbors.
Source: http://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/103111_Snowstorm_and_Irene_make_for_a_devastating_combination.html
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