No matter in which part of this country you choose to settle, there are climatic or geologically negative aspects.
The southeast carries the threat of hurricane; in the Midwest there are tornadoes. The west has its residents painfully aware of the Richter scale.
The northwest is known for its glum 200-day-a-year rainfall, while the southwest simultaneously has a legitimate water problem.
Northern winter temperatures can breach 40-below, and here in the east, we share the dangers of the hurricane season with our neighbors to the south, plus a little added adversary we euphemistically label as the “nor’easter.”
Greg Hoffman, who grew up in Cherry Hill but started coming to the south Jersey shore for summers in the mid-60s, considers the shore his real home. So it should come as no surprise that he has an interest in coastal storms in general and nor’easters in particular.
“There are basically two kinds of storms that hit us,” he explained, “hurricanes and nor’easters. The worst of a hurricane lasts a few hours, then it’s over, but a nor’easter can last for days.”
The worst of the more recent storms, Hoffman noted, is the 1992 nor’easter that hit the Jersey Cape.
Living south of Beach Haven in Holgate when the ’92 storm struck, he started to drive north—and took his video camera along.
“I saw floodwater waist-deep,” he said. “People were getting trapped.”
The video he shot became the basis of an 83-minute movie, Great New Jersey Coastal Storms, now available on DVD from wetwatervideo.com.
After the storm, Hoffman began to meet others who had also shot video.
“I began to swap tapes with others who had taped storm damage,” he said. “As I spoke with some of the old timers, I heard some of the same remarks: ‘This ain’t nothin’, they would tell me. ‘The storm of 62 was a lot worse.’ Some even said the 1944 hurricane was the worst storm ever to hit this area.”
So for the next two years, Hoffman started asking around, searching for other tapes.
“I was like Detective Columbo,” he explained, “getting names and following up on leads.”
Not only did he amass a considerable library of storm damage, but he also heard some interesting first-hand stories. He had the presence of mind to tape some of those stories, and those interviews are included in the DVD.
Avalon Police Commissioner during the 1962 storm, Lloyd Riggal poignantly describes how the “Avalon town fathers” left firefighter Bill Bach behind.
“During the 62 storm,” Hoffman said, “a disabled man in Wildwood who was confined to his bed, shot himself when the water rose over his mattress.”
Further north, an emergency crew, stranded in their truck, was struck by a duplex, which was being swept along by the tidal floodwaters. They sought sanctuary in the house and were eventually rescued during the next low tide.
“The duplex eventually went into the Barnegat Bay,” Hoffman noted.
More than 4,000 homes were lost in the 62 storm, according to Hoffman. One especially stuck in his mind. North Wildwood Fireman Robert McCullion’s home burnt to the ground while he was out fighting other fires.
Personally, I’ve seen the stills of the 62 storm; this is worse. And I’ve heard some of the stories, but not like these.
I remember coming to the shore in the summer of 62 as a teenager and looking at the devastation in awe.
But it’s not like being there when it happened. Hoffman’s movie takes you there—to the storm of 62, and to other New Jersey hurricanes and nor’easters.
To document other, older storms, he accessed the National Archives, and obtained clips from Universal Newsreels, who waived their copyright.
Hoffman, who has a graphic arts background, claimed that this was a natural project for him, since he is visually oriented. To his credit, the film does flow smoothly, and at times, terrifyingly.
Some people were actually taped standing on their deck watching the 92 storm, and you could hear them exclaiming as the water hit the homes around them. They seemed more amused than frightened.
“People tend to be mesmerized storms,” Hoffman said. “I watched footage of people staring at an oncoming tsunami, almost hypnotized by it. During a nor’easter, if you’re on fairly high ground, you can look at the storm pounding your neighbor’s house.”
People who want to live at the Jersey shore do not appear swayed by the risk of a nor’easter. Nor do they seem to be intimidated by what meteorologist George Prouflis describes as the media hype that scares people needlessly whenever a storm is forecasted.
“They (media) cry wolf,” said Prouflis, whose interview is included in the film. “But this (hype) sells airtime. Every storm is ‘the storm of the century.’”
Hoffman sees the difficulty that the media is faced with.
“The weather people are between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “If they say too much, they’re guilty of over-hyping. If they say too little, then they can be accused of not giving us enough warning. But they do occasionally take it too far.
In example, he cited the back-to-back storms of 92 and 93.
“Nobody saw the (coming) storm of 92 as a big deal,” he said. “Certainly no one expected it to be the most intense storm to hit the Jersey shore since 1962.
“The next year, In March of 93, they (media) touted a forecasted storm as ‘The storm of the century.’ Everyone was quite worried since the previous year’s storm had already stripped the beaches.
“Well, the 93 storm weakened at the last minute. The wind direction changed, and it only dumped a lot of snow up north.”
Hoffman does offer some comfort for the potential seashore homebuyer.
“New Jersey is outside the main hurricane belt,” he said. “We are 50 times less likely to get hit hard than Cape Hatteras. That’s because hurricane science says the west side of the hurricane is the weaker side.
“People think all barrier island are the same height,” he continued, “but it’s not so. Even in 1962, some places had little or no damage, but they were few. I was told that the 92 storm was worse in the north than it was in south Jersey.”
Hoffman’s movie is entertaining, frightening, informative, and yes—at times hypnotic.
You should also learn a few things you didn’t know before:
• From 1913-14, five storms hit the Jersey shore.
• In 1916, 10 blocks of Longport were wiped out.
• The 1920 storm that created Beach Haven Inlet did not immediately consume Tucker’s Island, but the new inlet changed the flow of the tidal currents, which resulted in the relatively rapid erosion of Tucker’s Island. Most of the real damage to structures on that island didn’t occur until the following decade, and it was the early 1940s when the last structure on that island (an old school house) was destroyed.
• During the first day of the 1962 storm, Philadelphia TV weatherman Wally Kinnan said it would be “clear by afternoon.”
• The wind gusted to over 200 miles an hour during the 1938 storm.
• The U.S. Navy destroyer Monssen, which saw action in World War II, was being towed to the scrap yard during the storm when it was washed ashore at the bird sanctuary on Long Beach Island.
“The last fatality of the storm of 62 was that of Navy personnel,” Hoffman explained. “A sailor was decapitated when the cable (towing the Monssen) snapped.”
Hoffman’s next project is a documentary on Long Beach Island, where he spent many summers over the past 40 years.
“In 1957, for example, a 50-foot whale washed up dead on the beach,” he said. “The locals tried to get rid of it by dynamiting it. What a mess! There was whale meat everywhere. The flies ate good that summer.”
Great New Jersey Coastal Storms is available at Sun Rose Words and Music in Ocean City, The Booksmith in Vineland, and at Seashore Home Supply in Stone Harbor. You can also visit www.wetwatervideo.com.
If nothing else, the film should make you think. You will think that there is something hypnotic about nature’s ability to easily overcome the frail efforts put forth by whatever beings live on this earth.
And it makes no difference whether those efforts are directed toward saving or devastating this world—in the end, they seem arrogantly puny.
