Looking Back: Hurricane Irene In Cranford

CRANFORD, NJ - As Hurricane Dorian barrels its way toward Florida heading into the Labor Day weekend it is hard for New Jersey residents not to be reminded of the Labor Day weekend storm that ravaged the region back in 2011.

Hurricane Irene was the first of several superstorms that plagued New Jersey causing widespread flooding and massive power outages.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm in Cranford more than 6,000 residents were without power, and more than 1,300 homes were damaged by severe flooding caused by the swelling Rahway River.

More than 200 homes had flooding that had water up to the first floor. Critical services like the municipal complex and the first aid squad were under water.

By the Monday after the storm, it appeared that much of Cranford was having a massive town-wide tag sale. But the yards full of chairs, rugs, golf clubs, toys and boxes were the cherished belongings of residents who were trying to sort through possessions that could be salvaged and the things so waterlogged they'd have to be tossed in the trash.

The homeowners mingled with neighbors and strangers alike, talking about their experiences during Hurricane Irene and how they hoped to restore their houses to pre-Irene conditions.

More than five feet of standing water remained in Ryan Helmstetter's basement, down from the floor-to-ceiling flooding that occurred the night before as Irene pummeled his Springfield Avenue neighborhood.

Helmstetter told Patch at the time a friend of his was going to donate his pump to help suck out the water in the basement — a job he expected to take about eight hours.

"We didn't think it would get this bad," he said, adding that his family had to be evacuated by boat when water hit the basement ceiling and looked as though it would rise to the first floor.

The Cranford First Aid Squad remembered the storm in a social media post.

"We would like to thank everyone who assisted us in getting back up on our feet, we couldn’t have done it without you," the squad posted to Facebook.

Hurricane Irene would have been the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in more than a century, had it actually been packing hurricane-strength winds at the time.

But by the time Irene rolled ashore at Little Egg Inlet in southern Ocean County, its wind speed had already decreased to 69 m.p.h. – a full 5 m.p.h. short of hurricane strength – meaning it was actually just a tropical storm.

The findings were released by the National Hurricane Center, the latest of equivalent post-mortems the agency has posted on every other storm of the 2011 hurricane season. Every year, the hurricane center releases "tropical cyclone reports" on each named storm after hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

The report said a storm surge of 3 to 5 feet along the state's shoreline caused moderate to severe tidal flooding with extensive beach erosion, but not surprisingly, the bulk of the damage caused by Irene was in the northern counties due to river flooding.

"The most severe impact of Irene in the northeastern United States was catastrophic inland flooding in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Vermont," the report stated.

This post contains reporting from Liz Mitchell Worthington

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