BY STEVE JANOSKI
STAFF WRITER
SUBURBAN TRENDS
Some areas of the East Coast managed to slip Hurricane Irene's knockout blows, but Pequannock, as always, took it right on the chin, with 9 inches of rain overwhelming every brook and river in the township and causing a degree of flooding that hasn't been seen since 1903.
At Town Hall on Monday, exhausted Pequannockofficials were unable to tell what day it was because they'd been awake so long while firefighters mounted huge deuce-and-a-half trucks and took to the waters to take people and animals out of homes.
All the while, residents and emergency personnel alike were awed at the unprecedented amount of damage that had been done to a town that had been transformed into a small island and left to fend for itself.
Preparations had been taken and flood plans were implemented. Governor Christie ordered the Pompton Lake Dam opened up on Saturday to drain the lake of about 3 feet of water, and toldPequannock Mayor Rich Phelan that he would be "taking a leap of faith" with local mayors to try to avert a 100-year flood.
In the end, after Hurricane Irene rumbled through the area this weekend and dropped over 9 inches of rain in the course of less than 24 hours, public officials would realize that Pompton Lake could have been drained down to the bed and it still wouldn't have mattered.
By the time the Pompton River was done with its tantrum at about 5 a.m. Sunday, it had crested at 25.24 feet, shattering the records for flooding from the past century and finally eclipsing the legendary 1984 flood by almost a foot.
A tired Phelan was shocked by the devastation that the waters brought.
"I couldn't believe how bad it was," he said on Monday afternoon. "The benchmark flood was 1984, everybody has always talked about the 1984 flood, that this was the big one — and this was beyond where we were at in 1984."
Phelan had promised during last year's election campaign to raise hackles about Pequannock's flooding problems with the state, but even he had to admit that this year's event, which was the seventh overall and the fifth major flood in the past two years, was unavoidable.
"We could probably stop the 10-year-flood," Phelan said. "But you can't stop the 100-year floods. It's impossible…you will never stop the 100-year flood unless you build 40-foot concrete walls out there…this is the one you have to grin and bear."
Township Manager Dave Hollberg had been awake for days as well, and met with Suburban Trends in his office on Monday during a break in the maelstrom of activity that characterized Pequannock's Office of Emergency Management command center, which was situated in a small conference room at Town Hall.
Hollberg said that with rain predictions ranging from 6 to 10 inches, it was difficult to know what to prepare for, but with the reservoirs to the north of the township already nearly full, he knew it would be only a matter of time before the waters of the Pequannock, Pompton, and Wanaque rivers combined to make Pequannock a reservoir itself.
Evacuations by way of reverse-911 calls began in the lowest-lying areas — neighborhoods by Harrison Road and businesses along Route 23 — late Saturday night and into early Sunday as the storm commenced, but things remained calm, the manager said.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, however, troubles began to mount. Water began coursing over the spillway at the Pompton Lake Dam, Hollberg said, and within a few hours, 6,600 cubic feet of water per second was charging through and heading downstream.
At 3 a.m., the water levels started rising; between 4 and 5 a.m., the river jumped up 2 feet. By 6 a.m., it had risen another 2 feet, and evacuations began on Oakwood and Pequannock avenues. The river had reached 16.5 feet — flood stage.
The Village was evacuated in preparation, and to nearly everyone's shock, Greenview Park and West Parkway began to flood for the first time in memory.
Some flooded-out residents on the west side of town blamed the new turf field construction atPequannock Township High School, although Hollberg said it's a bit more likely that it was rain combined with water blitzing down off the mountains that inundated the Beaver Brook by the Lincoln Park Airport and caused the water to back up into the streets.
'No place to go'
"When you get that much rain, it rushes down the mountain, and then it hits this flat spot and it's got no place to go," Hollberg said.
On Sunday morning, standing puddles of nearly a foot of water had made West Parkway impassable, and Jacksonville Road soon followed.
At the same time, Route 23 closed; Hollberg said that within an hour of the jughandle closing, the rest of Route 23 was shut off and only local traffic has been allowed in since.
The Newark-Pompton Turnpike would be shut down late Sunday afternoon as waters began to lap over the thoroughfare at several points and the Pompton swelled up to meet the bridge at the south end of town running into Wayne.
Calls rolled in constantly Sunday for evacuations, and they got more numerous and more panicked as the Pompton River began to seep under front doors in the darkness as it crested late Sunday night into Monday morning.
About two dozen calls came in after 8:30 on Sunday night, but Hollberg said that evacuations became exponentially more dangerous in the dark, and with all the notice given to residents to evacuate, the township refused to put its emergency workers at risk by performing midnight runs.
"I think that people who haven't been flooded before because it didn't quite make it into their homes didn't heed the (evacuation) warning as closely," Hollberg said.
At dawn on Monday, the rescues resumed, and altogether about 600 homes were ordered evacuated. How many individuals were rescued is still unknown.
The damage was savage. Homes in the Village Area off Jackson Avenue, which floods only during the worst storms, had 4 to 6 feet of water their first levels; their front doors showed dirty high water marks at stomach height on Monday afternoon.
Cars and trucks left overnight featured fogging windows and radiators with sticks and brush jammed into them, and front lawns swayed like seaweed below the waterline as the current ebbed and flowed through the neighborhood.
The south end of town saw similar totals, and even National Guard deuce-and-a-half trucks floundered in the Alexander Avenue area.
'Closed for the season'
PV Park's diving board now rests in the middle of the one giant lake that has absorbed both PV and Woodland Lake, and Hollberg said that the lake is "officially closed for the season."
About 30 residents crowded into the shelter set up at Pequannock Valley Middle School, which functioned throughout the storm. On Monday, however, PV, along with a wide swath of the southern end of town, lost power because a malfunctioning power substation off of Irving Street was surrounded by water, precluding JCP&L from reaching it.
However, the manager said, the township dodged the predicted high winds, and few power outages were reported during the storm.
For once, it will be hard blame the Pompton Lake Dam's floodgates for the township's troubles, even though it has become a favorite target of residents and officials alike since its completion in 2007.
Although Hollberg said that he would have rather had the dam opened and left open in order to avoid the sudden increases in river height that occurred Sunday morning, he said that the overall volume of Pompton Lake is so small that it had "no impact" on the amount of water the township received.
"You get a hurricane that produced 9 inches of rain in 18 hours, we can be ready to react to the effects of the storm, but I don't think there's anything that can be done…that much rain is gonna cause flooding," he said.
Phelan said that he thought the draining of the lake "couldn't have hurt," and that more importantly, it will open the door for future draining ahead of smaller storms.
Had Irene dropped 4 inches of rain instead of nearly 10, the draining might have averted the typical flooding that occurs, he said.
"We got Christie to actually do something, so we can probably go back the next time we know there's going to be a heavy rainstorm…and say, 'You did it one time, now do it again for us,'" he said. "It was a great thing (Christie) did even though it didn't help, but it may help on our 10-year floods going forward."
In the end, however, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported in the township, and attention will turn to helping the recovery, whenever it begins.
It is still too early for damage estimates, but it does not look promising.
Early reports indicated on Tuesday that part of the highway by Woodland Lake was undermined, and a reopening date is yet unclear.
The Newark-Pompton Turnpike bridge into Wayne was still closed Tuesday, and will be until the bridge can be inspected. Few access routes into the town are open, and police are checking licenses before letting people in.
Phelan said the big concern now will be to organize volunteers and get out and help the residents who are enduring once again.
"We're going to do whatever we can to help them…but it's going to be a huge cleanup," he said.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/128859683_Irene_sinks_low-lying_areas.html?c=y&page=3
