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BACK IN THE DAY - 06/08/2008
Toxic waste, snakes, blackouts and floods
NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at some disasters that were written about in Suburban Trends around early-June over the years.
1993 – I-287 accident
After decades of squabbling, I-287 was finally being built in our area and local officials were already thinking about what to do if there was a major emergency on the yet-to-be-completed highway, like the truck accident that happened in Riverdale on May 7 of this year.
A trucker is accused of driving carelessly and overturning his tanker on I-287 in Riverdale. About 600 gallons of a toxic chemical was spilled, but no one was injured. The trucker is scheduled to be in municipal court in a few days to face the music for dropping his load on the highway and closing that section of road for 12 hours.
But officials were ready for this kind of thing 15 years ago.
“An accident of monumental proportions will soon occur on the yet to be opened portion of 1-287 between Montville and Riverdale, where access may prove problematic to emergency respondents,” it was reported in June 1993, five months before the long-awaited highway stretch between Montville and Suffern, NY was completed.
“The staged accident planned for later this month will prepare emergency personnel for the real thing. A host of complications may be associated with a major accident. Not only is quick medical attention to
victims paramount, but the cleanup of hazardous waste, fire, weather conditions and traffic control may also play a part in any given scenario,” it was reported.
Harry Hicks, a man of many hats, was behind the drill as Kinnelon’s emergency management coordinator.
Last month, emergency workers from local towns, counties and the state itself responded to the truck accident. Fifteen years ago, Hicks said that his “incident command chart” involved more than 200 participants.
“The purpose of this drill is to establish a procedure to respond to an incident on 1-287 in the Kinnelon area. I want to emphasize the words, ‘to establish,’” said Hicks, “We may find we have problems and have to take the next six months coming up with solutions.”
He compared the exit-less stretch of I-287 between Montville and Riverdale to an amusement park log flume that riders can’t get off until the ride is over.
“This section of the highway has been a concern to emergency personnel since its inception,” it was reported. "Besides the access problem, water for fire fighting and communications are part of the equation. The different police dispatchers cannot communicate with some other departments because of incompatible radios. It has been proposed that all departments request funding for compatible systems, he said.”
There were worries because it would take 20 minutes for a Morris County communications van to arrive at the scene, and then take another hour to set up. So, a more efficient communications system from faraway Ridgewood was scheduled to be deployed also in the event of a local I-287 emergency.
Karl Klingener of MICOM (Mobile Intensive Care Communications) said his dispatch center was ready to serve Passaic, Bergen and Morris counties.
Klingener said about two years prior, MICOM began formulating a disaster plan after observing some confusion at major accident scenes.
“Access will be the biggest problem. You have a seven-mile stretch with exits only at each end,” said Klingener, “Waughaw Road is an emergency access, but I wouldn't drive my car on it, let alone an ambulance. When I-287 opens up and there is an accident, people will have to sit in traffic for seven miles.”
1983 – Snake on a wire
A three-foot-long black snake got entangled in a Rockland Electric substation on Peters Mine Road and caused a power outage that plunged 3,200 Ringwood electricity customers into darkness around 10:30 on a Sunday night in late May. Crews were on the scene in about a half-hour, and it took them more than three hours to restore power.
“We had a standby crew on hand. It wasn't cold on Sunday night, but sometimes animals are attracted to the sub-station by the warmth of the generator. It's not the first time a snake has gotten into our equipment,” said a spokesman for the electric company.
The borough police station itself remained dark for almost half an hour after the initial outage because of the malfunction of an emergency generator there.
“We're supposed to have emergency power,” said a police dispatcher. “But it didn't work, so the Erskine Lakes Fire Department brought their emergency generator.”
The dispatcher said he went to the Fire Department building to man the radios in case of an emergency during the reptile blackout.
1968 - Flood!
This column tries to avoid including articles about flooding because this topic has been covered in just about every Suburban Trends edition for decades. But the 1968 Memorial Day Flood was one for the record books.
We let the pictures tell the story on the front page of the June 2, 1968 Suburban Trends.
The top photo showed a woman standing inside her home’s recreation room with dirty water covering the floor up to her knees.
In another photo, an old woman covers her mouth in a nervous gesture while watching her husband try to evacuate important possessions from their home in Pleasureland in Oakland.
An old man sits atop his car in front of Wayne Manor on Route 23 because the floodwaters reached his windows. He looks almost bored, or resigned. The caption says that he was rescued by a Good Samaritan in a big truck seconds after the photo was taken.
In another photo, a police officer directs a family holding their belongings to evacuate.
Over 250 picture negatives were processed for the edition.
When the articles finally started on the next page, we declared that particular issue to be a “flood edition.” We said that everyone who worked for the newspaper, from reporters to advertising salespeople to delivery boys, did a great job in bringing in the scoop. As the flood receded, a boy in Haskell entered the rushing waters with his bicycle and drowned in front of his playmate. There were few details reported about the incident.
We also got several calls from readers to report on what was happening.
A woman in Oakland said her septic tank was backing up into her bathtub. A Pompton Lakes man called us and asked if we knew where he could buy a sump pump.
A little kid in Riverdale called to tell us how he saw his neighbors being evacuated through the rushing floodwaters by using a makeshift rope bridge.
An imported European car called a Simca floated down Hamburg Turnpike with no driver.
Over 2,000 people were evacuated from Wayne.
Over 250 people in Pequannock were evacuated. Those with well water systems were warned to boil their tap water before use. A picture showed two little boys in that town waist-deep in water and using an empty kiddie pool to float a valuable television set above the floodwaters and out of harm’s way.
It was all old hat to us. We’d been complaining about the lack of flooding prevention measures in the area for a decade already.
There were tidbits about the flood peppered all over the newspaper, but the first main article addressed the same old topic: what about next time?
Politics and bureaucracy were preventing effective flood control measures from being implemented, we said.
“The extent of this flood was caused by stupidity,” avowed Samuel Krumholtz, vice-chairman of the Upper Passaic Valley Flood Prevention Committee.
“This could have been avoided with a flood-control program but was brought about by the stupidity of area towns and their planning boards. Their policy of allowing too much building In the flood plains,”
Pequannock Township Planner Abe Janz, said, “That report of the Army Corps of Engineers submitted in 1965 is still sitting on Governor Hughes' desk.”
The engineers' report, an updated version of similar reports completed in 1939 and in 1948, and again In 1961, contained proposed flood programs for the protection of residents of the Passaic Valley.
The general opinion was that the poor planning in flood-hit towns created the danger. Many of the holding areas in the floodplain were grabbed up by builders in the postwar boom, it was reported. Where land could have absorbed flood waters, now there was macadam and concrete.
One estimate said that due to the development that had taken place along the Pompton, Pequannock and Ramapo Rivers, a flood as serious as the 1903 flood could have caused over $200 million dollars of damage in the area.
Longtime Suburban Trends editor Howard Ball wrote a firsthand account of visiting his friend Joey Brocato’s home in Pompton Lakes. Brocato had tried to live the American Dream – to get out of the city and buy a house in the suburbs. It was all being washed away.
Ball waded through knee-deep water on River Edge Drive to visit Joey. He saw his friend trying to back his car out of his driveway, realizing the water was too deep, and resigning to drive the car back up the driveway again.
Ball said he knew that as the water coursed down the street and lapped at the edge of the curb that it would only get worse, and than in a few hours there would be five feet of water covering Joey’s front lawn.
Ball was cold and wet when he went inside, and Joey offered him a drink that warmed the veteran journalist.
When Joey’s wife left the room, he asked Ball what was going to happen.
Ball said he didn’t want to lie to Joey because he was a New York bartender and a good friend of Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Ball told it to him straight, and Joey poured more whiskey.
Joey told his wife that he was going to move more of their possessions to the attic.
With the water continuing to rise and with his car becoming endangered, Ball left his friend, got in his car, and drove to a new spot that would be safe from the floodwaters for a few more minutes.
He advised some residents to move their television, and then drove on as the floodwaters continued to rise.
Later in the day, Ball borrowed a rowboat from a little kid, and he and Mayor John Sterling floated above waist-deep water back to Joey’s house.
Joey was standing on his front stoop. The water had already covered his lawn and was about to go over his second stoop step.
“Hey Howard,” called out Joey. “I guess you were right. The water just keeps coming.”
Ball introduced Joey to his mayor, and said they were rowing around the neighborhood and advising people to get out.
“I’m not going,” replied Joey. “This is Joey Brocato. This is my life. I’m staying here.”
Then Joey noticed the water had risen another six inches since the conversation began, and changed his mind.
“OK. I guess we better get out,” he said.
Ball and the mayor continued on their way. A few minutes later, Joey and his wife passed by on a borough rowboat. His wife was holding a bundle of their things. Joey was just staring back at his house, his dream.
“Now it’s a nightmare,” reported Ball.
Disaster deals!
You gotta admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the Grant City store in Pompton Plains.
Quick to capitalize on the calamity, they took out a full-page advertisement that showed that their store’s parking lot was underwater, but still working to serve its customers.
They advertised a “flood damage sale.”
“Prices are slashed on merchandise damaged by water but still in excellent condition,” boasted the ad. “Tremendous values” could be found in furniture, appliances and clothing.
In an editorial, we said we’d complain some more about the flood control situation later, but reserved the editorial space to praise the efforts of the hundreds of community volunteers who worked through the flood and risked their lives for their neighbors.
Early estimates pegged the amount of damage in the area caused by the flood at almost $100 million in today’s money.
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