What Hurricane Ida Left Behind In Millburn: A Wake Up Call

MILLBURN, NJ — On the night of Sept. 1, Derek Alfano was driving on Millburn Avenue when water started to pool around his ankles inside his car. Before he knew it, the engine stalled, and the water inside quickly rose to his knees. In a panic, he evacuated the vehicle and took refuge in a nearby medical office building.

Just down the road, Mario DeMarco — the owner of Italian restaurant Basilico — climbed down a ladder from his restaurant’s second story window with help from firefighters, who were worried the structure would collapse.

Across the street, a torrent of water overflowing from the nearby Rahway River gushed into Goldberg’s Deli, the sheer power of it shattering the bagel shop’s steel front door.

A few doors down, floodwaters seeped into the crevices of Millburn Highline Fashion and drenched beaded ball gowns in dirt and sludge.

Farther up Millburn Avenue, screams were heard from a man trapped in his half-submerged car. “I can’t swim, I can’t swim!” he yelled in desperation.

Down by South Mountain Elementary School, residents watched helplessly as their basements filled with water and sewage, frantically trying to salvage any precious belongings they could.

What was evident following the storm was the Millburn community's resiliency. In Ida’s wake, residents rolled up their sleeves and helped fellow neighbors and businesses clean up debris and restore damaged homes.

What remains unclear, however, is what will be done to stop future storms from upending so many lives, or how little time township leaders have to act with climate change on the rise.

While there is no doubt Tropical Storm Ida wreaked havoc on Millburn Township, the storm was by no means the first environmental disaster to cause widespread damage, nor will it be the last.

Ida’s Path of Destruction

Tropical Storm Ida was one of the most devastating storms to hit New Jersey in recent years. A total of 29 people died in The Garden State alone during the flooding. This included Patrick Jeffrey, a father of two from Maplewood — just one town over from Millburn — who died trying to clear debris from the entrance to a storm water tunnel by his home.

The storm first made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29 — the 16th anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Then, it was a Category 4 storm with top wind speeds of 150 mph.

According to Bloomberg, more than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana were without power on Monday, Aug. 30. Ida was downgraded to a tropical cyclone as it moved inland, and wind speeds decreased.

Still, few areas of the state were spared from Ida’s wrath, with the destruction spanning from Passaic County in the north to Gloucester County in the south. Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency on the night of Sept. 1, while multiple tornadoes tore through the state and severe flooding and power outages were rampant.

A flash flood watch was issued for Essex County from 2 p.m. on Sept. 1 until the next day. Heavy rain was expected in Millburn that night, but many households were unprepared for what was to come.

A Traumatizing Night For Residents

Sharon Richman, a Millburn resident on Locust Ave, said she and her husband did not expect the storm to escalate so quickly.

The Richmans live on Locust, one of the steepest streets in the South Mountain section, where many residents faced severe flooding and irreversible damage.

Richman said they parked their two cars on the street because their driveway often gets flooded during storms like Ida. They considered moving the cars elsewhere that night, but once they decided to do so it was too late. Water had seeped under the seats and touched the electrical wires. They lost two of their cars to the flooding that night.

Their home was also seriously flooded.

“Our basement got flooded five feet, so we had to get a demolition crew the next day to take the basement apart down to the studs,” Richman said. “We were watching [the water] come up to our stairs, hoping and praying it wouldn’t go onto our first floor.”

Luckily, the first floor was spared, but the couple had to replace their hot water heater and two boilers, as well as fix electrical wires in the basement. Richman said they lost a lot of books, two printers and two laptops in the flood, and they are still in the process of rebuilding.

Looking back, Richman wishes the town had given more warnings ahead of the storm.

“Usually there’s way more warnings,” Richman said. “In the past, I think during Irene, they said to move your cars up to where the Trader Joe’s area is. There should have been a warning saying to move the cars up to higher ground.”

Despite the significant damage that the Richmans faced, they experienced less compared to other residents in the South Mountain area.

Kim and Saeed Hossain-Miu, who live by South Mountain Elementary, were severely impacted by Ida. A GoFundMe page created by Kim’s brother, Jason Miu, states the family had to be rescued by the fire department that night, as the floodwaters in their home rose.

“Their house is uninhabitable — sewage and floodwaters filled up the entire home,” Miu wrote. “Their home and everything in it has been destroyed by Ida. Thankfully they were all safe, but it will be a long road ahead to rebuild, and they will not be able to return to their home for the foreseeable future.”

Miu said the one-story home had waist-deep water, ruining practically all the family’s furniture. The basement was covered in dirt and sewage water, and the ceiling tiles in the basement fell, creating a heavy, wet sludge.

Beyond the furniture and structural damage, Miu said a lot of memories were lost in the flooding. He said his sister was most upset about the loss of sentimental objects, such as high school yearbooks and memorabilia for her two kids.

Community organizers Micole Richter and Joanna Parker-Lentz were instrumental in gathering volunteers and resources to vacuum water out of people’s basements and get residents and businesses back on their feet.

Parker-Lentz said many may not realize it, but Hurricane Ida was a traumatic experience for a lot of people, and it could take a long time for them to fully recover from that night.

“I have never been in a war zone, and I'm not going to say that this [was], but it is a traumatic experience,” Parker-Lentz said. “People are experiencing PTSD because their families were trapped and running to the second floor, or they [were] trapped in cars and couldn't get home. Stories keep coming out. It's just ongoing. This is not going away for months, if not, for a year.”

Derek Alfano, a Maplewood resident and Paper Mill Playhouse staff member who was driving through Millburn Ave during Ida, said he also still experiences traumatic memories from that night. Whenever there is a heavy rainstorm, he is scared to drive — in fear that he may experience a repeat of Sept. 1.

After Alfano escaped from his car that was filling with water, he planned to wait inside a medical office at 90 Millburn Ave until the storm subsided. But as the storm was raging on, he heard screams from a young man named Junior saying he couldn’t swim.

Junior’s car had floated on top of Alfano’s now fully-submerged car, and his head was poking out the sunroof because the doors had locked from the inside.

"I was afraid, but I knew I couldn't live with myself if something happened to him. I couldn't leave him there," Alfano said.

In the midst of lightning flashing around him and downed electrical wires, Alfano waded into the five-foot floodwaters and pulled Junior out through the sunroof of his car.

"It was really scary because my biggest fear was getting electrocuted," Alfano said. "I just prayed to God and said, 'God please protect me.' And I said, 'if I'm meant to die today, then okay.'"

Eventually, Alfano and Junior were picked up by the fire department and taken to Millburn Library, where many others took shelter for the night.

Mayor Tara Prupis reported later that week that many residents, particularly in the South Mountain section, completely lost their homes due to the extent of the flooding and were displaced. Two months later, many of these homes remain uninhabitable, and these families are still figuring out permanent housing.

Prupis also said the township received over 150 calls for service to the Millburn Fire Department and the Department of Public Works to pump out water from low-lying residential and commercial basements.

"This is unlike anything we've ever seen in years," Prupis said in voicemail to the community. "Now is the time to come together and help one another."

Millburn’s History of Flooding

Ida may have been the most destructive storm to strike Millburn in recent decades, but it was definitely not the first.

Historically, Millburn has been the victim of intense flooding. Longtime residents have seen Millburn Avenue transform into a muddy river far too many times, despite the town’s flood mitigation efforts over the past 20 years.

The repeat flooding is largely caused by the Rahway River, which runs right through the town. The Rahway is approximately 24 miles long and extends throughout Essex, Middlesex and Union Counties.

As Millburn residents know, this is the same body of water that travels adjacent to restaurants like Thai House and Goldberg’s Deli and pools into the Taylor Park Dam and the South Mountain Reservation.

Whenever there is heavy precipitation, the river rises and eventually overflows into the streets. With a storm like Hurricane Ida that averaged almost eight inches of rainfall in less than 24 hours, the overflowing of the Rahway River is nearly inevitable.

Exacerbating the situation even further, an abandoned car and a lot of debris were lodged under the bridge by the Millburn Deli that night, preventing the flow of water through to Taylor Park.

This video posted to Twitter demonstrates the extent of the flooding in downtown Millburn that night.

According to a presentation from John Ruschke, the vice president of Mott MacDonald — an engineering consultant company Millburn has worked with for many years — the amount of rainfall from Ida was close to what is considered a “100-year storm.”

This is statistically a storm that releases more than 8.66 inches of rain and has a 1% chance of occurring in a given year. But due to the rising issue of climate change, Ruschke said these 100-year storms are happening a lot more frequently.

Within the past 20 years, Millburn has experienced three major storm events: Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Hurricane Irene in 2011 and now Ida in 2021.

Although Hurricane Irene dropped more overall rain on Millburn, Ida came with stronger downpours, causing floodwaters to rise higher and faster than past storms.

In the past, Millburn has addressed the flooding problem with a variety of infrastructure changes. These efforts included raising the Vauxhall Road Bridge and increasing the channel width and flood walls upstream of the bridge. The town also installed several pump stations to control the local drainage system, but Ruschke said these are ineffective when it comes to storms as powerful as Ida.

“Once the river overflows and is flooding the area of Millburn, the pump stations cannot keep up,” Ruschke said. “The pump stations function well when you have storm events of a 50-year storm or a 20-year storm, but once you reach a 100-year storm, the pump stations are ineffective because you have nowhere to pump [the water] to.”

The Threat of Climate Change

Ruschke also emphasized a bigger storm will always be coming down the pike — especially because of climate change.

“When we talk about flood mitigation, you have to be realistic,” Ruschke said. “Flood mitigation is actually reducing the frequency of flooding, not eliminating flooding.”

With climate change and rising temperatures, it is likely that the intensity of these storms will continue to escalate, said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist and professor at Rutgers University. He explained that as the planet warms, heat waves become warmer and rainfall becomes more intense. This, in turn, causes sea levels and coastal water levels to rise.

“It takes less than an extreme event to cause the same amount of rainfall or coastal high water, or heat,” Kopp said. “What used to be a 1 percent chance of it [occurring] becomes increasingly common as the average state of the climate changes.”

Kopp said the only way phenomena like these massive storms could decrease in intensity is if humans stabilize the planet’s climate by lowering global greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero.

Finding a solution won’t be easy. In the meantime, Kopp said, efforts like lowering reservoir levels and raising flood walls could be effective short-term solutions. He also suggested the idea of raising homes to prevent residential flooding.

“Another [solution] is trying to limit the damage that happens when things aren’t flooded,” Kopp said. “The most iconic example of that is elevating houses along the shore so that if the water comes in, the water goes underneath, and it doesn't really damage inhabited parts of the house.”

According to Ruschke, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has “extensively reviewed the Rahway River” and studied at least 19 different alternatives to come up with a flood mitigation plan.

Suggestions have included lowering the Orange Reservoir prior to storm events or constructing a new dam in the South Orange Reservation, but some of these plans have been rejected due to engineering designs being deemed “unfeasible.”

Ruschke explained that the Army Corps has strict criteria when it comes to implementing infrastructural changes. A solution must have a “feasible engineering design” that meets Army Corps standards.

Even if a proposed plan was approved by the Army Corps, Ruschke said the corps works extremely slowly and could take years to actually implement these changes. He said quicker action could be taken on a township level, and that the formation of Millburn’s flood advisory mitigation committee could help speed that along.

Millburn could propose a “non-structural” mitigation plan, which would focus on making improvements to flood-prone structures. This involves wet-proofing, dry-proofing, elevating or relocating certain properties that are vulnerable to frequent flooding.

The Financial Impact From Ida

Ida’s destruction was swift, leaving an estimated $100 million in damages in its wake.

This was the total estimated cost for both businesses and residential properties in a preliminary damage assessment that the town conducted in the first day or two following the storm, according to Business Administrator Alex McDonald.

McDonald said it is possible the cost has increased since that preliminary assessment. This information was submitted to FEMA to designate Essex County as a disaster area. FEMA added Essex County to its disaster list on Sept. 10.

FEMA said it received about 13,000 applications for individual assistance in Essex County. The disaster relief organization reported supplying $28 million in funding for individuals and households in the county.

However, when asked whether residents or businesses were given any funding from FEMA, McDonald said he didn’t know if any FEMA checks had been issued at all. He said the town is going through a public assistance project process and receiving funding could take anywhere from one to three years

But for more immediate financial relief, Explore Millburn — the non-profit organization formed to support the businesses in Millburn’s Special Improvement District — raised over $400,000 in grants. Steve Grillo, the executive director of Explore, said the non-profit dispersed the money between 75 businesses in the district.

McDonald said $220,000 of that sum was allocated by the Township Committee from the town’s reserve fund with approval from the state. The rest of the money was raised through various fundraising efforts, such as a Hurricane Ida Business Recovery Fund and various GoFundMe pages.

The Millburn Mud Ball — a fashion show fundraiser — also raised over $50K for struggling businesses throughout the district.

The funds that damaged businesses received from Explore Millburn aided in their recovery from storm damage. But for some business owners, there is still a long way to go in terms of fully recuperating financially.

Jesús Núñez, the owner of the new J. Nunez Gallery downtown, said he received a check from Explore, but it only covered a small percentage of the damage his store incurred.

“It’s been a very hard time because I already invested money to open a business, and I have to invest the money again after Ida,” Núñez said.

For small businesses, the road to recovery is by no means an easy one.

The Recovery

Instead of getting ready for school the day after the storm, Millburn High School and Middle School students put on their best rain boots, grabbed shovels and headed downtown to help with the cleanup.

While thick sludge and mud coated Millburn Ave and Main Street, the sidewalks and stores were packed with students and local volunteers shoveling debris and clearing out damaged furniture from flooded businesses.

As Millburn Schools were closed that day, Superintendent Christine Burton and high school principal William Miron encouraged students to help out with cleanup in town. This involved removing debris and mud from stores like ChocolateWorks, Playa Bowls, LaStrada, The Millburn Deli and many more.

Mario DeMarco, owner of Basilico, said this is the third time he has seen his restaurant flood in the past 20 years. This storm, he said, was by far the worst because not only did the basement flood, but the streaming water broke the front door and rushed through the main dining room.

“Every part of the restaurant got touched, and the damage is pretty severe,” DeMarco said a few weeks after the storm. “The floor’s been ripped up, all the walls have to be repainted, the ceiling’s going to be repainted … It’s overwhelming.”

The night of the storm, DeMarco and his staff, as well as a family with kids having dinner in the restaurant, had to be rescued by the fire department from a second-story window because of fears that the building would collapse.

After about a month of renovation, Basilico was able to reopen its newly-installed doors on Oct. 8.

However, there are some businesses in Millburn that still have not been able to reopen. This includes Goldberg’s Deli —a popular bagel shop in town — that lost 95 percent of its equipment, said owner James Rotondo.

Because the water broke through the four-foot wide steel door to the restaurant, the store filled with water, leaving behind mud and debris. Although saddened by the damage and loss of inventory he experienced, Rotondo said he was really touched by how the community came together and helped clean out the store in the following days.

“I mean, people just came in droves with shovels and buckets,” Rotondo said. “Parents, students, everybody just showed up. My family showed up, my employees were here. It really was a touching effort on everyone's part.”

Aside from the students and parents who volunteered downtown, other community members also stepped up to the plate to help struggling families in the residential areas. Longtime Millburn resident Art Fredman and Rabbi Ari Isenberg of Congregation B’nai Israel organized volunteers to help fellow synagogue members clean out their flooded homes.

Fredman said at least 20 members from the synagogue had their homes devastated by Ida. Because he is retired and had no damage to his own home, Fredman volunteered to sit by the phone and take calls if anyone needed help the following day. Whether it was providing meals or offering a place to sleep or an office to work in, Fredman organized volunteers to help those in need.

“I had two families have dinner with me after a few nights because these people had just suffered for the first three days,” Fredman said. “They were knee-deep in damage.”

When Fredman received a call that the basement of an elderly couple in their nineties was completely flooded on Greenwood Drive near South Mountain, he immediately drove over and called his personal plumber, Ronnie, from Maplewood.

Ronnie had been working for 18 straight hours and told Fredman he was exhausted. But when he heard it was an elderly couple in need, he came right away with his pump to evacuate water from the basement.

“I met Ronnie back at the house a few hours later,” Fredman said. “And I happened to have a couple of $100 in cash. I was afraid he's going to charge an awful lot for doing something like that. I say, Ronnie, I’ve got to give you something.’”

“He says, ‘If I had to take money from elderly people, I would quit this job. I don’t want a dime. It is my pleasure to help these old people who have nobody,’” Fredman recalled. “It’s as simple as that. I get shivers thinking about that. I’ve known Ronnie for years. He’s just that kind of guy. My plumber was my hero.”

Congregation B’nai Israel also experienced some flooding and damage, as it’s built downgrade from the river near Locust Ave. Just days before Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year — Rabbi Isenberg said so many people volunteered to clean up the synagogue that they had to eventually send people away because there weren’t enough tasks.

Fredman said that “extraordinary circumstances often bring out extraordinary qualities in people,” and the Millburn community was no exception to that during the aftermath of Ida.

Whether it was mopping the floors of muddied restaurants or donating to GoFundMe pages created for struggling families, the community exemplified its strength in many ways.

“I believe the reason I love this town is because we provide support systems,” Fredman said. “And so we all do our part … We're real people who are commuters or stay-at-home people. When it comes time, people really come through.”

What Happens Now?

It is hard to predict when another devastating storm will strike Millburn, but research shows climate change increases the odds of a deadly storm as each year passes. It’s likely the township will see another 100-year storm before the century is out.

While it is certain darker days could lie ahead for Millburn, the question remains: will we be prepared?

Rabbi Isenberg seems to think the nearly-prophetic Hurricane Ida — which struck just days before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year — proves the answer is yes.

“[The response] reminded me of the story in the Bible when Moses asks for donations toward building the sacred Tabernacle,” Rabbi Isenberg said. “The response is so overwhelming that he has to turn away some of the materials provided. An abundance of good will and volunteerism marked those sacred days before our New Year. In a way, our community was strengthened as a result.”

“Isn’t that often the case?” he added. “In challenging times, blessings still abound.”