Flooding Rampant Near Passaic River; Some Roads Reopen, Others Remain Closed

UPDATE: 3:42 p.m. Two bridges over the Passaic River remain closed today as the river, swollen from major rainfall over the weekend, continues to flood roadways nearby.

Bridge Avenue and Central Avenue are closed. The river, which the National Weather Service reported to be at 7.85 feet as of 3 p.m., has completely covered  the roads on the Union County side of the Passaic River, and a Volvo that had attempted to drive through the flooded area on Central Avenue last night remains stuck. The river floods when it is above six feet. (Photos documenting the flooding on Central Avenue are at right.)

Intermittent rain is expected to continue throughout the day, and the river's water level will likely rise to eight feet by 8 p.m. It is expected to recede after that.

Township Police Lt. William Behre said the bridges will likely not reopen until Tuesday or Wednesday. Borough police placed calls to all residents on Friday night warning them to refrain from driving through flooded areas, and township police sent out an alert with the same message.

Township resident LeAnn Tavtigian was out walking her dog, Honey, by the flooded area as New Providence Department of Public Works officials began working to free the car from the water, just across the bridge from the township.

"There's no way we weren't going to get this flooding with all that snow," she said.

Meanwhile, township Department of Public Works employees used chainsaws to chop branches from a downed tree at River Road and Henry Drive—one of the municipality's major thoroughfares—so it could easily be cleared from the scene.

The downed tree on River Road was one of three trees that DPW officials said required a large-scale cleanup. The other two, which were right near one another, fell on Edgewood Road near its intersection with Fairfax Terrace. The road is now open; it was closed yesterday along with Mount Vernon Avenue and Maple Street, but all those roads are now open as well.

One tree fell on Edgewood at about 4 p.m. Saturday, during the height of the storm, while the other fell at about 8:30 p.m. Township resident David Hill, who lives on Edgewood, said he heard the second tree fall. No homes nearby sustained damage.

"We were putting the kids to sleep and we heard a boom," he said.

A few minutes earlier, Hill had come out of his house, exclaiming: "We've got power!" Crews working on the street had restored the street's power and departed from the area as Hill spoke. He waved them goodbye, and they saluted back.

Hill said the crew had come from Akron, Ohio. Jersey Central Power & Light, he said, had contracted out some of its operations to officials from other states since the power company's local crew is stretched thin working at locations across the state hit hard by the storm.

Jersey Central Power & Light officials could not immediately be reached to confirm that arrangement. Behre said, however, that the only power outages in the township that occurred during the storm were a result of isolated downed power lines, and said there were no widespread power outages in the municipality.

Regardless, Hill said lots of people on his street had their basements flooded, and Borough Mayor Nelson Vaughan also said the vast majority of borough residents experienced the same fate as a result of the rainfall.

"I'd say the last 30 years, maybe, we've never had heavy rain [like this]," Vaughan said. "We've had heavy rains, but this was a real humdinger. It just stayed on top of us."

He said power has been restored to most borough residents, and according to Jersey Central Power & Light, less than 500 homes in Chatham remain without light or heat. The area of the borough around Dunbar Street, he said, has been one of the last to get its power back. Homes along North Passaic Avenue were also without power throughout the weekend, thanks to downed trees in Livingston that affected a power grid.

The Madison-Chatham Joint Meeting—the local sewer plant—has been overwhelmed by the storm, and it is not conducting normal operations as a result.

"The river backed up and basically is almost pushing the flow back," Joint Meeting Superintendent Chris Manak said. "We're still flowing, per se, but we can't adequately treat, because it's beyond our control."

He said that as the river subsides, "everything will pick back up," and he said the state Department of Environmental Protection has been notified of the matter.

Borough Volunteer Fire Chief Peter Glogolich said crews were out for about 27 straight hours from Saturday through Sunday helping pump out basements in homes where sump pumps stopped working. He said they had 25 calls within that span of time—normally a month's worth of calls.

"Yesterday was pretty crazy—we just kept going from one place to another," he said. "We're just tired. We need a day or so to recover."

Fire officials, he said, did lots of work near Hillside Avenue, where many homes also lost power. Rising water levels caused one resident's furnace to burn, and flames burst out of it before fire officials came to shut off the furnace's burners.

Regardless, Glogolich said, a spirit of congeniality pervaded many of the areas where his department worked.

"It was nice to see everyone pull together in a tough time," he said.

For now, residents are still attempting to put the storm into context. Former township Planning Board member Bill McCutcheon, who has lived in Chatham for 16 years, was on Central Avenue, observing the flooded water and the Volvo stuck in its wake.

He said he had been near Stanley Park in the borough earlier, where a weir—a small dam typically used to elevate water levels—is usually visible. Now, he said, it's not.

"When you can't find it, you know you have a lot of water," he said.