Saturday, September 10, 2005
The Next Great Storm
Sitting on the bulkhead at Manasquan Inlet last week, thinking about Hurricane Katrina, couldn't help but look around with a storm in mind. The place was surrounded on three sides by water, "Luxury" condos on the most vulnerable northeast corner with a large asphalt parking lot behind them. Nearby was the memorial to fishermen lost at sea.I recalled a spring day about two decades ago,
I was almost trapped on Sandy Hook when the rising tide began
bringing ocean breakers & bay water together at the narrow
southern neck, Route 36 to Sea Bright already flooded as waves
pounded against the high rock wall.
Wildwood has the widest beaches on the Jersey coast but they are
extremely flat; I remembered a gray August day, a hurricane
spinning away over a hundred miles offshore, the entire beach to
the boardwalk covered with about 6 inches of water.
A storm surge surely would have flooded large sections
of the city itself.
At Point Pleasant Beach, a raw, windy saturday evening,
great surf, a huge wave suddenly crashing in, chasing me
& about 50 other onlookers nearly all way back to the boardwalk
as the foaming water churned toward us across dry sand.
I remembered, as I often do, visiting Atlantic City a week
after the "Ash Wednesday Storm" of March 1962, a stalled
northeaster that wrecked hundreds of miles of coast & nearly
wiped out Long Beach Island. Pacific Ave. in front of my
grandmother's place was packed with debris, TV sets mixed
with the splintered wood. Long sections of the boardwalk were
torn up, the midsection of Steel Pier gone, an apartment building
on Absecon Inlet half collapsed, toilets & bathtubs
sticking out, colorful wallpaper waving in the breeze,
made an unforgettable impression on a 13 year old. That summer,
hearing my father's reaction to new construction as we drove
through Longport; "That's crazy." By no stretch was dad an
environmentalist. You had to fix the boardwalks, he said,
but don't rebuild the private homes, don't put houses on beaches,
don't fill in any more marshes. He'd been around the shore
all his life & he'd seen enough destruction. It had happened
before & sooner or later it would happen again. He was a true
conservative: Stop throwing good money after bad. But those
houses on sand have survived for over 40 years. The next
great storm is overdue.
Jersey shore can break your heart. Not just the development
but that so much of it is by & for wealthy people who tear down
modest old shingled houses & plant large McCottages in their place..
Beachfront condo construction that literally cuts off the ocean view
& the sea breezes from families who have lived there for decades.
& the long stretches of dredge-&-fill beaches, courtesy of the
Army Corps of Engineers & taxpayer dollars; true, these offer
a buffer against storms, but it takes some doing to plant one's own
umbrella & blanket on them; many are in effect private strands.
Ocean levels have been rising since the last ice age. No matter what
the cause, we're into a more active storm cycle. But we're humans.
we'll never sound retreat. We want the government to butt out
when we're driving in pilings for new building & yet we expect
subsidized flood insurance for all. Come on storms, do your worst,
we'll be back with our decks, chaise lounges & cocktails.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I come from Long Branch, up the coast. Years and years ago we all learned why the streets are named, from the beach: "ocean avenue, second avenue." Huh, where's "first avenue?" Um ... see those breakers?
# posted by 
: 5:39 PM
: 5:39 PM
When I first visited Cape May Point less than 20 years ago, the WWII bunker was still partly on shore. It was built several hundred yards back from the beach. But Sandy Hook is lengthening. The speed with which tidal shoreline can change is fascinating.
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