Images Of Harvey Bring Sandy Memories Back In Toms River, Brick

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The photo of a group of older women waist-deep in water in a Texas nursing home caught Paul Daley's attention.

"I don't really know the story behind it," Daley, Toms River's emergency management coordinator, said Monday of the image, one of the most indelible images so far from the impact of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas over the weekend and continues to dump dozens of inches of rain on the Houston area.

"I haven't listened to a lot of the interviews, not because I don't care about what's happening," Daley said. "I don't care to go through it again."

Nearly five years after Superstorm Sandy turned lives upside down in Toms River and throughout much of the Jersey Shore, the photos and video coming out of Houston and Rockport, Texas, where Harvey made landfall on Friday are vivid reminders of the havoc wreaked closer to home: homes and businesses destroyed, floodwaters filling streets as far as you can see, hundreds of evacuations.

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"We evacuated (rescued) more than 500 people the next morning," Daley said, people from Ortley Beach and from Seaside, and people on the backbay areas that flooded beyond all expectations. "We had told people to evacuate lowlying areas, but no one expected it to break through in Mantoloking and no one expected the perfect storm" that trapped water in Barnegat Bay and the lagoons instead of allowing it to run out and reduce the flooding, he said.

Houston, of course, is a much larger area; more than 6 million people live in the greater Houston area and as of Tuesday morning, more than 3,000 people had been rescued from floodwaters.

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And while there are some similarities — the flooding from Sandy was labeled a 500-year event, and the flooding in Houston has been called simply unprecedented — there are some differences between the storms.

Sandy was larger; at the time it struck the Jersey Shore, it was a 482 miles across. Harvey was 280 miles across when it made landfall on Friday night. Harvey, however, was a Category 3 when it hit land, with sustained winds of 125 mph, according to National Weather Service data. Sandy was a Category 1 with winds of 80 mph.

Harvey had a smaller storm surge, of 2 to 3 feet in an area that sits 50 feet above sea level. The storm surge with Sandy was 8 to 9 feet in an area that is 25 feet above sea level. However Sandy brought with it much less rain, 3 to 5 inches over Toms River and Brick. In the Houston area, they are contending with what's expected to be as much as 50 inches of rain. The impact of Sandy was exacerbated by a nor'easter that moved through and dropped snow on the area a week after Sandy hit, however.

Sandy arrived during a full moon, which produced astronomical high tides at the same time as the storm surge and kept the water in Barnegat Bay much longer.

In Harvey, which landed during the transition from the new moon to the first quarter, the water has been held in because the storm surge raised the level of Galveston Bay, leaving rain running off from the storm with nowhere to go, storm surge expert Hal Needham from Galveston told the New York Times.

"Seeing what is happening brought back many memories of the long hours and outside-the-box decisions that needed to be made as events unfolded," said Brick Police Chief James Riccio, who was deputy chief in Brick at the time Sandy hit. "We also remember how we came to rely on the outpouring of support we received from so many outside emergency service agencies, police, fire and EMS from around the country as well as the support we received from the community."

The first responders have been on the mind of Seaside Heights Borough Administrator Christopher Vaz.

"It is extremely stressful for first responders and essential employees to be separated from their families during a crisis of this magnitude," Vaz said. During Sandy, Seaside Heights Police Chief Thomas Boyd, several first responders and several people they rescued holed up on the top floor of the police department as Sandy howled outside.

"This is a particularly difficult time for first responders and other city government staff who live in southeast Texas. Many of them had very little time to prepare their own homes for the storm and make arrangements for evacuating their families," Vaz said. "Many of these folks are performing their jobs uncertain whether their families are safe. Some of them may have even lost communication with their families: on Sunday Rockport, Texas was reporting that 95 percent of its cell (tower) sites were not operational."

"I pray that every first responder and essential employee returns safely to their family as soon as possible and that they have been spared from injury, death and property damage," Vaz said.

"I've been doing this for 40 years," Daley said. Superstorm Sandy was "the first time we ever had to tell somebody 'Good luck,' " when people refused to evacuate ahead of the hurricane. He has spoken to other emergency managers about the events of Sandy, but it's not something he seeks out.

"I was the keynote speaker at the National Hurricane Conference," he said where he spoke about some of the improvising they had to do as planned responses were changed by the unfolding events of Sandy. "I'll go if I'm asked again but I have no desire to relive it."

"The one good thing is we have a lot more equipment and a lot more planning now," Daley said.

As assistance pours into Texas from across the country, including a contingent from the New Jersey State Police, Riccio said it is situations like this that can bring a community closer.

"Incidents such as this bring out the best and in some cases worst in people, but overall it brought our community together like never before," Riccio said.

"I feel for those people," Daley said, "because our residents went through it. We're still living it. They have a long road ahead."

A man wades out toward Barnegat Bay on Butler Boulevard in on Oct. 30, 2012, the day after Hurricane Sandy struck. Photo by Karen Wall