UPDATE: Power Restored in Most Borough Homes, Flooding Remains

UPDATED: Wednesday, 9:55 p.m.

At a hastily-organized press conference Wednesday afternoon at the electrical provider's North Jersey headquarters in Morris Township, JCP&L President Donald Lynch said that, and that they are working around the clock to get the remaining 120,000 still without power back online within the next several days.

On Wednesday afternoon, Chief of Police Anthony Buccelli said the power outages and flooding conditions in New Providence have, for the most part, remained the same since Tuesday.

According to the JCP&L website, approximately 60 households in New Providence are still without power.

Buccelli said the number of borough homes without power may be higher depending on how JCP&L tracks the households in the area.

Some New Providence residents have Murray Hill, Berkeley Heights or Summit mailing addresses, but actually reside in New Providence, Buccelli explained in a phone interview.

While he was not sure what information JCP&L uses to track the households without power, Buccelli said if the company is using mailing addresses, some New Providence residents may be grouped with the count in Murray Hill, Summit or Berkeley Heights.

"So if you're in the Tall Oaks area and you say ‘well, I live in New Providence,’ but you have a Summit mailing address, maybe that is what the power company is using," Buccelli said. "The only way we know who has power and who doesn’t is by riding around at night and seeing what street lights are on and off, and we can only guess because we don’t know where that ends," he said. "We have no other way other than going by what JCP&L tells us."

Buccelli said the New Providence Police Department does not have control over when power is restored to borough homes.

"You can't get in touch with anyone from [JCP&L]," he said. "It’s out of our control. I mean ours just came back at Police Headquarters yesterday."

According to the JCP&L Outage Map, the estimated number of households without power as of 9:29 p.m. are:

New Providence: 60

Murray Hill: 458

Berkeley Heights: 979

Summit: 1022

As for the flooding conditions in the borough, Buccelli said Passaic Street and Walton Avenue at the Chatham border were re-opened on Wednesday and the water on Charnwood Road seems to be receding. But elsewhere, the conditions remain the same.

"Central Avenue and River Road are still closed. The river seems to be subsiding, but slowly," he said.

As for the water in the Skin Deep Day Spa parking lot, Buccelli said, "I don’t know if that water is just stuck there in the parking lot, I don’t know. I’m only saying that because it looks like it’s not going anywhere."

To view the estimated number of households without power by town in New Jersey, visit the JCP&L website and click on "Current Outage Maps," which are updated multiple times each day.

Original Story

Although Hurricane Irene swept through the borough days ago, residents are still dealing with the damage the storm left behind.

While no injuries were reported, Chief of Police Anthony Buccelli said less than 100 households in New Providence are without power and some roads are still closed off due to flooding as of Tuesday afternoon.

“At one point, almost the entire town was out of power. Between three quarters and the entire town. It slowly came back in little areas at a time,” Buccelli said in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon.

While most power has been restored in the borough, residents living near the New Providence Train Station were still suffering from power outages on Monday and Tuesday due to a few down telephone poles and one leaning pole along Old Springfield Avenue and Division Avenue. Two businesses, Towne Deli & Liquors and Hill City Cleaners, were also feeling the affects and closed up shop until the power can be restored.

CURRENT FLOODING AROUND BOROUGH

As of late Tuesday afternoon, the following areas in New Providence were still partially or completely flooded:

• Parts of Charnwood Road, Ridge Street, Clement Road and Etmore Place
• Passaic Street (closed to traffic at Chatham border)
• Central Avenue at Chatham border (closed to traffic at Springfield Avenue intersection)
• Springfield Avenue in front of (but open to traffic)
• Salt Brook (running along and under South Street)
• Parking lot of
• Part of the parking lot

“Those areas, Etmore, Charnwood, flood all the time because they back up to the river. Passaic street and Central Avenue, those streets are closed because the river is now cresting. It’s at its height, which basically means it’s not going anywhere,” Buccelli said. “What you’re seeing at that area of Skin Deep [Day Spa], there are two brooks that actually meet there in that area so it’s like a Y or a T intersection and it’s just filling up.”

While the water is beginning to slowly recede, Buccelli said it’s “pretty much a waiting game.”

On Sunday, Fire Chief Ralph Parlapiano said several basements in New Providence were flooded and the department received numerous calls from residents.

During the actual storm, Parlapiano said the fire department received about 200 calls from residents, asking the department to pump out their basements and to shut off utilities in their basements.

“We pumped probably around 50 [basements] so far. I think most of them are done,” Parlapiano said Tuesday afternoon in a phone interview. “I know I have one more on Charnwood because the basement is totally flooded, but we can’t get to it yet because the river is still flooding into the garage so once the river goes down, we’ll pump it.”

WATER MAIN BREAK ON TUESDAY DUE TO STORM

To make matters worse during the Hurricane Irene clean up, the borough had a water main break early Tuesday morning on South Street.

Buccelli said he noticed water running into the street around 6 a.m. and the water company was handling it. As of Tuesday afternoon, it appeared that the break was fixed.

Buccelli said Berkeley Heights had a couple of water main breaks as well, which he attributes to the hurricane.

“Usually that happens a lot of times with the change of weather, when the temperature changes," he said. "But when that many go this time of year, when the temperature is pretty constant, it’s obviously due to the storm and the pressure that’s put on it.”

BEFORE AND DURING HURRICANE IRENE

According to CoCoRaHS, Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, communities throughout Union County received more than 9 inches of rain from Hurricane Irene.

When Irene was passing through the area early Sunday morning, Buccelli said the flooding was much worse in New Providence compared to the current conditions.

“There was one time that you couldn’t get around because the whole town was flooded. There were a lot of flooded areas. I can’t even tell you off the top of my head because there was at least two times where we just stopped putting barricades up because we couldn’t get them,” Buccelli said. “We didn’t have enough, nor did we have the man power to do it. And it was just, “okay, everything’s flooded. Just stay away from it.’”

Buccelli said 25 individuals took refuge during the storm at the Borough Hall’s shelter, which opened Sunday morning at 1:30 a.m. and closed on Monday morning at 8:15 a.m.

“Mostly they were residents in town. There were a couple of people who got stranded and found their way here because they couldn’t make it home,” Buccelli said. “One was trying to get to Millburn, [another woman’s] car broke down and she was from Newark.”

Buccelli said he and most of the individuals on the Emergency Management team — Fire, EMS, DPW and Police — also worked in the borough during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and knew they needed to be prepared for Hurricane Irene.

“We were quite prepared for this storm because we knew what we experienced back in 1999 with Hurricane Floyd,” Buccelli said. “We had three, 2 ½ ton Army trucks that we were using to get through the water at the bad times on Sunday night.”

Warren Perillo owns one of those three trucks and was the operator of his truck on Sunday night, Buccelli said. Paul Dormant owns the two other trucks. He operated one and had a second operator, Tom Serpico.

“We had the trucks out there, and my patrol officers would team up with the driver of one of those trucks because the cars wouldn’t be able to get through certain areas,” Buccelli said. “They came out in the middle of the night and they were great. I can’t say enough about our volunteers and the people who came out here. While most people were sleeping during this thing is when it was really hairy. It was at 1:30 in the morning.”

Buccelli said the borough was also ready with a few boats spread around New Providence if they were needed. “Thank god we didn’t [need the boats],” he said.

“I’m very thankful no one was hurt and there’s not enough people I could commend from the response end of it from to to the and ,” he said. “They all did a great job, came together. But a lot of us were together 12 years ago during Hurricane Floyd so we knew the drill.”

Buccelli said the borough’s Emergency Management team, whose workers were at Borough Hall from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, also knew they needed to be prepared for this storm because of where New Providence is situated.

“We needed to deal with this ourselves and be prepared ourselves because even though there are outside resources like Union County, they can’t get to you because they can’t get through the water,” he said. “So you have to be ready before it starts and some consider that overkill. But once it starts, like I said, that’s how people get stranded because they can’t get anywhere either.”

Buccelli said he would compare Hurricane Irene to Hurricane Floyd and one snow event that occurred 10 years ago.

“It was similar to Hurricane Floyd, but we had a snow event in 2001 in which there was a lot of snow that was at the right exact temperature and it stuck to the trees and power lines, and everything crashed at once,” Buccelli said. “We lost power for three days. And I would say that was probably worse because the whole town was at a stand still. But as far as a water event goes, yes, this and Floyd, and back in March we had a pretty bad one too, which was just a bad storm that dumped over 10 inches of water.”

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT STORM

Buccelli said before his time, there were some improvements made in town to help allow the Passaic River and the brooks in town to flow better.

“That brook [by the Community Pool] was never cement and one of the reasons why they cemented it was to enable the water to flow better and apparently… this is what I was told, this was over 30 years ago, that helped. That’s improved,” Buccelli said. “But we also do stream bank erosion projects and things like that. There’s what you call mitigation. That is, after a storm, you look at things and say, ‘okay, what can we do to prevent this from happening again?’”

Buccelli said improvements have been made in recent years around the borough, such as the bridge on South Street that runs over the brook by , which was closed for improvements several years ago.

He said the bridge on Central Avenue, near the Chatham border, was also improved in the last few years.

Since Hurricane Floyd, the area behind the Crestview Pool, by Central Avenue and Maple Street, was also improved.

“During Hurricane Floyd in 1999, that whole area [was flooded]. I mean it got 5, 6 feet deep underneath that bridge where the railroad bridge is on Maple Street by the pool,” Buccelli said. “Behind there is a catch basin that kind of allows the water to run and it’s a giant grate that catches the debris so the debris can’t block the water flow because that’s what happens. That was improved after Hurricane Floyd, which was probably 10 years ago. And now it needs to be redone because what happens is the walls kind of cave. It [happens] just naturally from use of regular storms, not only hurricanes.”

Buccelli said the borough tries to make these improvements so the water of the Passaic River and the brooks can flow better, and to help prevent flooding when the next storm hits the area.