Weather-weary coast braces for nor’easter

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

A New Jersey shore town Tuesday ordered evacuations, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he is considering them for his state as a new storm threatens gales, rain and flooding.

Brick Township Mayor Stephen Acropolis ordered evacuation for waterfront areas by 6 p.m. Tuesday. Those farther inland whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Sandy were “strongly encouraged” to leave, according to a notice on the town website.

The nor’easter may barrel up the coast, bringing peak winds of 65 mph and a storm surge as high as 4 feet, said Lauren Nash, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton, N.Y. There’s a small chance other New Jersey shore residents may need to leave, Gov. Chris Christie said.

“We don’t expect huge storm surges, at least nowhere near what we got with Hurricane Sandy,” Christie, a Republican, said Tuesday in Westwood. “What I’m worried about inland is the loss of power. We might lose ground on that.”

Sandy knocked out electricity to 8.5 million homes and businesses across 21 states after hitting the coast Oct. 29. About 916,000 remain in the dark in New York and New Jersey, where temperatures are near freezing, according to estimates from Christie and Cuomo.

Christie said the evacuations in Brick were ordered locally and he has no current plans to expand the zone of people who are removed from low-lying areas. That decision may change in the coming day as the storm’s path and severity become more clear, he said.

In New York, Cuomo ordered utility companies not to release workers who have come from across the U.S. and Canada to help repair downed lines in case the approaching nor’easter causes further damage, he said. About 350,000 New Yorkers remain without power as the new storm threatens to knock down more wires, flood coastal areas and further disrupt the gasoline supply, Cuomo said.

“We’re on storm watch,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said Tuesday at a news conference in Manhattan. “We’ve had little good news, but we live by the adage of prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

There was one glimmer of hope: Forecasters told state officials Tuesday morning that the new storm may move farther out to sea than originally expected, lowering the risk for high winds and tides,Howard Glaser, state director of operations, said at the news conference.

“If that’s true, that would be very good news,” Glaser said. “However, we are preparing for potential impacts. Even though the storm would not by any means be a Sandy, it could bring high winds and some coastal flooding to already vulnerable areas.”

Sandy, the biggest Atlantic storm in history, raked the region with winds of as much as 100 mph. Its surge of more than 13 feet inundated transit tunnels and underground utilities, destroyed homes and chewed away natural barriers such as beaches.

It disrupted voting for the presidential election and caused confusion in New York City, New Jersey and Long Island, where polling places had to be moved from storm-damaged or power-deprived buildings.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said thousands of people, at least half in public housing, may need shelter as power remains out in some areas. The mayor named Brad Gair, who served as recovery officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the Sept. 11 attacks, as director of housingrecovery operations.

The arrival of colder weather with so many residents still blacked out “is the next big problem for us,” said Bloomberg.

Emergency workers were distributing blankets along with food and water, and police used loudspeakers to urge people to go where they could be warm and safe, he said.

Christie, who lost power at his Mendham home until Monday night, told reporters Tuesday that about 566,000 customers remain without electricity. He said 4,000 people displaced are in local and county shelters and the state has closed its emergency shelters. There is capacity to house more people if subsequent evacuations are ordered, Christie said.

All state roads are open and New Jersey workers are helping to clear local and county roads, the governor said. Route 35, the road that links New Jersey’s barrier island resort communities, was washed out and “like a war zone,” he said. Electricity to power commuter trains into New York City is still “not fully operational,” he said.

About 31 percent of the 36,000 homes and businesses in Brick Township had no power Tuesday, according to Jersey Central Power & Light. Winds from the new storm could fell damaged trees, further complicating the task of restoring power, said Sgt. Keith Reinhard of the township Police Department.

The town is setting up an elementary school to shelter residents and assigning school buses to transport others to state facilities.

In Atlantic County, which includes low-lying mainland and the 40,000-population casino resort of Atlantic City among its barrier-island municipalities, crews were ridding the streets of the Sandy-damaged belongings before the arrival of high winds, accordingto Linda Gilmore, a spokesman for the county.

In New York City, a National Guard truck carrying Guard members involved in the storm relief effort struck and killed an 82-year-old man on Canal Street in Chinatown on Tuesday afternoon, the authorities said.

Additionally, the New York attorney general’s office is looking into whether gasoline offered through the Craigslist website for as much as $8 agallon is legal as motorists cope with retail shortages after Hurricane Sandy.

Information for this article was contributed by Esme E. Deprez, Peter S. Green, Jeff Bliss, Elise Young, Alison Vekshin, James Nash, Romy Varghese, Brian K.

Sullivan, Freeman Klopott, Aaron Clark, Chris Dolmetsch, David McLaughlin and Dan Stets of Bloomberg News and by J. David Goodman of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 11/07/2012