<p>In my area of NJ, everyone I know has power back and life around town has returned to normal. Our on-going challenge will be the destruction of our train line (Morris & Essex) and the glaring lack of reasonable commuting alternatives. There are few bus routes that are completely overloaded with near-riot conditions at Port Authority Bus Terminal between 5-8pm. FEMA has provided a few buses to ferries, but that has just started and travel times have been fairly horrible because of traffic & accidents on the roads. </p>
<p>Prior to the storm, my commute was just under an hour door to door. I considered myself fortunate to get to/from the office late last week in under 2 hours each way. </p>
<p>In the scheme of the destruction in the region, this is a minor inconvenience, however I have an employer who doesn’t care.</p>
<p>Having a weeks worth was not even close to being adequate in some parts. Literally, nothing on shelves of the very few stores that had power. My local supermarket, even still has not been able to get substantial deliveries. Storm was two weeks ago.
Power went out again in the neighboring town to ours last night. Those stores which can get deliveries are not stocking perishable items, not unlike homeowners, not sure when power will go and can’t afford to lose more inventory to spoilage.</p>
<p>Lost power again last night right as I was finishing dinner with both kids home for a weekend visit. It was okay. Gas stove. </p>
<p>Reading the NJ Star Ledger, it seems there are a gazillion different commissions in a gazillion NJ towns who decide when and how much and even if ever trees near roads and power lines are cut down or trimmed. It also seems that environmentalist groups in the state insist trees be preserved no matter what. </p>
<p>Well, okay. Either bury the lines or cut the trees, Fools. The country and world are laughing at you. And don’t even think about asking for more money from taxpayers to get it done.</p>
<p>Seems like the Occupy Sandy folks have stepped into the poorest/most stricken areas. My stepbrother and his wife have been volunteering with them in Brooklyn. They seem to be taking care of the housing projects as best they can.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine where everyone who lost a home will go…there’s nowhere to put even FEMA trailers in NY :(</p>
<p>No recent word from my family about the housing situation in LB except that they still can’t live there. They, however, have the resources to stay with others or rent. But with so many looking for places to rent I wonder how THAT will go…</p>
<p>sewhappy- I am in a strong R town in a strong R county and we can not cut down trees without permission and planting a replacement. Cutting trees is not a partisan issue in NJ</p>
<p>I am not local to NJ anymore, but a common issue has always been that townships are quite parochial and it’s hard to make regional decisions. There are 500+ school boards in NJ and any discussion about going to county wide school boards gets shut down pretty quickly. Same with things like garbage collection; when our tiny little township wanted to outsource that city service, residents had a cow. </p>
<p>Now that we live somewhere where county wide government is the norm, it’s hard to see what the big deal is about ceding local control to the county. It’s more efficient. </p>
<p>Talked to my SIL this weekend. She’s had power back since last Saturday but she’s exhausted. Everything is a big deal to do because you have to think about if you have enough gas, and if you have to make a detour. The supermarkets aren’t back up to full and she lost 2 full fridges of food. Halloween in her town was held yesterday but the kids were collected can goods & she felt bad because she hadn’t restocked after using most of her pantry during the past 2 weeks.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen tree cutting raised as an issue by any major environmental group in NJ–they’re much more focused on environmental justice issues, clean water, air pollution, pesticide usage, etc. I can imagine someone calling him/herself an “environmentalist” in NJ and ranting on trees, but that’s never been a NJ issue with the major players. Too much of real importance to deal with here. (my kids both work with one of the major enviro groups, and tree-trimming has NEVER been an issue they’ve been remotely interested in.)</p>
<p>Tree trimming is a hot issue in my Ohio village, but not for environmental reasons per se, more because people here like them (we are a “Tree City USA”) and the electric company hacks them horribly when they “trim”. I too wish we had underground lines but it’ll cost a lot…maybe not as much as we lose when we lose power so often though…</p>
<p>I’m in Morris County, NJ and still do not have power. We were told we’d have it Friday, then Saturday, and now silence. I can’t tell you how tired I am of this. I try not to complain because we are so much better off than many others, but I’m craving a return to normalcy.</p>
<p>My town was settled over 100 years ago & the houses in my neighborhood built 80+ years ago. Some of the oaks & ashes are probably as old. We had 12 hours of 65+mph of easterly winds that toppled some of these giants like dominoes. It was not a matter of trimming or being between the power lines, as they took out whatever was in their way when they fell. The accepted estimate to bury the lines is $1+ million/mile. </p>
<p>For the record, you need a permit to remove a tree in excess of a certain diameter, but trimming is not an issue. The permitting was brought about by a few homeowners clear cutting their property for no apparent reason except they wanted more sun on their lot.</p>
<p>nj2011mom- this is the problem down the shore-</p>
<p>That’s because the replenishment projects are not easily started — or completed. Rochette says three factors have to align at the right time for the bulldozers to start dumping sand and shaping beaches — federal funding, property access and the right conditions on the shore line.</p>
<p>On LBI, property access has been one of the biggest hurdles to the projects, with several lawsuits contesting the local government’s efforts. In litigation spanning a decade, homeowners argued they didn’t want to give local officials perpetual easements, that the loss of ocean view had severely devalued their property, among other things.</p>
<p>The most recent high-profile court case called into question the entire beach replenishment program along the barrier islands, when a state appeals court ruled a couple in LBI’s Harvey Cedars should keep a $375,000 award for their lost ocean view.</p>
<p>Some LBI residents who don’t live on the beach and who aren’t holding up dune projects feel Sandy is the last straw. They’ve been left homeless for weeks, possibly longer. Natural gas may not be restored for months.</p>
<p>It just seems the state and the fed should buy out as many homeowners as possible on the barrier islands for conservation purposes. Just a glance at a map of LBI tells me they should start there and drastically limit rebuilding.</p>
<p>The Jersey barrier island have been sitting ducks for a while. Just look at the dunes at the Outerbanks and the damage they still suffer with hurricanes. We have decent dunes at the end of our street and they saved our street. 8-10 blocks south of us in the same town was not as fortunate, as there are no dunes in the more touristry area, so people can have direct views of the ocean. There, the storm surge came 1-2 blocks inland and flooded houses. </p>
<p>I’m interested to see what, if any, damage Deal and Elberon had, as they refuses beach replenishment so they don’t need to allow public access.</p>
<p>We had a 13-22 foot dune at our new oceanfront LBI house. People (who didn’t know any better) last summer would remark how sad it was that we could only view the ocean from the top floor. We would answer that the dune was our protector from storms so the decreased view was fine with us. That dune saved our home and the homes on our block! The water ran over the beach access and stairs and then down the block but did not go over the top of our dune.</p>
<p>njmom, The situation is similar in our neighborhood. The houses are about 100 years old, with some newer ones mixed in. There were many very large trees, some much older than 100 years. We lost a huge tree that was several hundred years old in Irene, and a tree of similar age on the lot behind ours went down in Sandy. Our small village lost 200-300 trees in Sandy. In some places, they went down in rows, uprooted. There have also been a few people who took down all trees on their lots (no permit needed). The character of our street has changed now, it’s not as leafy as it was. </p>
<p>I heard on the radio that the NJ towns that had participated in the beach replenishment program did well through Sandy, while the towns that had not participated, because owners would not grant access, were destroyed. It’s a shame that beachfront property owners can control the fate of the entire town. Maybe some new laws will be passed. Maybe the inland property owners will sue the beachfront owners who blocked the replenishment.</p>
<p>Sandy was a worst case scenario–anyone out there know what it’s been deemed? A 500 or 800 year storm? It came to shore at the worst possible spot making it possible to push water up the rivers to cause flooding–and at the worst time during high tide. Even a few miles landfall in either direction would have had a vastly reduced impact. Not sure that even the best prior planning would have been helpful. It’s difficult to anticipate the effects of something that is new. And planning for worst case scenarios is not cost effective or desirable–we’d all live in bunkers somewhere if we did that.
Someone mentioned how tired their sister or SIL is just making decisions and juggling shortages. Been there, done that–the brain works on one thing at a time and it’s very exhausting.</p>
<p>Gouf78–I’m wondering why you say that a small change in landfall location would have made a difference. The storm officially made landfall south of AC, but a huge swathe of the JS to the north, along with NYC and SI, were devastated. How would a small landfall change make a difference?</p>
<p>And as said, these kinds of storms are going to be more frequent, so the chances of high tide overlap will also be more frequent.</p>