Two days after the biggest snowstorm in seven years blew through Secaucus, people around town were still talking about the Blizzard of 2003 – their tales of survival to rival the stories old timers tell about other storms they’ve experienced here.
Elder citizens of Secaucus used to talk about the Blizzard of ’47, and how crippled Hudson County was back then. Those living here over the last decade can also recall a similar storm that blew into Secaucus in January of 1996.
Although both the 1996 storm and the storm that hit last weekend have been called “storms of the century,” to resident Lou DeGennaro, neither was as bad as 1947.
“We got about 28 inches,” he said. “I was a teenager living in Union City at the time.”
Last week, senior citizens and other residents struggled to get through the aftermath of a storm that covered Secaucus with 24 inches of snow, and drifts that clogged narrow streets and sealed many residents in their homes.
DeGennaro, who has lived in Secaucus about 10 years, said he had to spread the work cleaning up his front walk and digging over two days.
“I did part of it the first day, and I’m waiting for some of it to melt,” he said.
Pat Cinotti, president of the Secaucus Sixty Plus senior citizen club, said family members and neighbors help many of the seniors get through this year’s storm.
“Many of them just can’t go out,” he said. “Something like this isn’t safe.”
Cinotti, however, praised the efforts of the senior bus service that started up service nearly immediately after the storm ceased.
“You can call up and the bus will pick you up,” Cinotti said.
Karyn Urtowski, director of Secaucus Department of Social Services, said bus service has been difficult, particularly along some of the narrow streets where snow and cars make it nearly impossible to pass.
“We’re using the smaller of our two buses, the Silverhare Express, to get around,” she said. “It can get through where the other bus might not be able to, and make turns the other bus can’t manage.”
Even then, senior bus service – which takes senior citizens to the supermarket, the mall and other areas, has been limited to the wider streets such as Front Street, Centre Avenue and Paterson Plank Road.
“If seniors could get out to those streets, we could pick them up,” Urtowski said.
The storm had a significant impact on one town program that helped dig out low-income seniors. Under a program that low income seniors need to apply for, crews of diggers from Integrity House will shovel the walk of low income senior homes.
“But the senior must meet stringent criteria,” Urtowski said. “They have to meet the financial requirements and must not have children or grandchildren that can help them.”
Such seniors are required to submit proof of income before the town will authorize a crew, and the senior must fill out an application in advance.
“If there is more than 2 inches of snow on the ground, we can send a crew,” Urtowski said. “Each crew is accompanied by a DPW worker.”
More than 60 people were on the list for this storm, stretching the town’s resources and causing a delay of 12 to 14 hours.
A good recovery despite problems
Several residents complained that the snow crippled many of the more narrow streets, making it difficult for people to pull out of their driveways.
Town officials, however, said the combined efforts of various departments managed to keep all the streets open during the worst of the blizzard. Local officials claimed it was “a chore” as volunteer members of the Office of Emergency Management and the Secaucus Fire Department worked side by side with Department of Public Works employees to clear streets and deal with extraordinary situations – such as the person that needed transport to New York City for dialysis, and the dryer fire in the 3rd Ward to which fire fighters responded early in the storm.
“It was very typical situation that we would face with any heavy snowstorm,” said Mayor Dennis Elwell in talking about the town’s response. “While we had a few complaints from people about not having their street cleared, the fact is we kept every street clear for the whole of the storm in case we had to get emergency vehicles through them. Some of the streets in the North End are very narrow, and we had to plow them several times. Often this was close to vehicles parked on those streets.”
As with many more traditional storms, people tended to dig their cars out and throw the snow in the street, only to come back to find that the plow had buried their cars again.
“All in all, our workers, from the police chief to the lowest paid employee, did a stellar job,” Elwell said.
Heavy snow stopped around midnight on Monday leading into Tuesday, Elwell reported. Road crews cleared the Plaza section, carting the excess snow to the Swimming Pool parking lot or to Mill Point Park. Secaucus received about 24 inches of snow, but because of the wind, some areas saw high drifts.
“We had problems because as fast as we plowed, the snow blew back onto the road and we had to go back and plow those streets again,” Elwell said.
DPW Superintendent Mike Gonnelli said his crews did an excellent job in dealing with the storm.
“We started at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday and worked around the clock until Monday night at 10 p.m.,” he said. “Since then, we’ve been up at 4 a.m. and worked through to 10 p.m.”
Gonnelli said once the street plowing was finished, the crews started hauling snow out.
“We’re doing all the emergency routes, emergency services buildings, schools and places of worship,” Gonnelli said during a Wednesday telephone interview. “We’re also doing the central business district and all the narrow streets in case we get hit with another storm.”
Critical to the clean up is work on the catch basins that allows for draining of melting snow and avoids street flooding if another storm hits.
Gonnelli, who handled the cleanup of the 1996 blizzard, said while the 2003 storm was large, in 1996, the town had to contend with back-to-back snow storms that complicated cleanup.
“This storm (2003) was a big storm, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle,” he said. “I have a great crew and the town provides us with some of the best equipment.”
Before most storms, town officials gather the Emergency Management team, which include all relevant department heads and personnel: DPW superintendent, the police chief, director of the OEM, fire officials and others, where strategies are discussed for possible situations. This also usually involves listing resources available to the town, such as what vehicles are capable of traversing the snow, and what areas of town need to be cleared first so as to assure fire, police and ambulance vehicles can get through. Information is broadcast to the public through the town’s cable access Channel 36 – broadcast out of the OEM facilities on Paterson Plank Road.
The OEM was responsible for getting a kidney patient transported to New York City for a dialysis treatment and other patients to facilities in Union City.
Nearly no flooding
Remarkably, Secaucus suffered very little flooding – unlike similar storms in the past. While the storm did hit at high tide and during a full moon, Elwell said the town saw only a small amount of water.
“No roads were closed,” he said.
What helped make the cleanup easier, he said, was the fact that the storm hit over a holiday weekend, when many drivers were not out on the road anyway.
“If this had hit during a normal day with the usual heavy traffic, we would have taken three or four days to get it all cleared,” Elwell said. “We would have had more people stranded and many more complaints.”
The most problems the town faced came at the end of the storm when people started digging themselves out and throwing snow into the street, causing the DPW to retrace its plowing.
“The whole idea for us was to keep the streets open in case of an emergency,” Elwell said.