Saturday, September 28, 1985 ― 40 Years Ago
Hurricane Gloria, while not as catastrophic as state and local authorities had feared in the days before its arrival, still turned out to be quite the calamity for thousands of residents and remains one of the Jersey Shore’s most memorable storms 40 years ago this weekend.
Gloria’s damage may hit $10 million; Furious gales cut roads, electricity
Hurricane Gloria unleashed winds up to 70 mph along the Jersey Shore, lifting off roofs, closing highways, ripping apart boardwalks, chewing up beaches and cutting power.
The damage in Monmouth and Ocean counties could reach $10 million, officials said.
From Long Beach Island to Sandy Hook Bay, the eye of the storm, its tranquil center, raced along the coast as a wall of thunderstorms swirled around it, dumping 3 inches of rain on the area. Gloria’s damage may hit $10 million before crashing head-on into Long Island, New York.
Gov. Kean announced at midday that the storm took no casualties, but there was a fatality in its aftermath.
Michael Lewis, 19, of Long Branch, was electrocuted about 2 p.m. when he tried to remove a 4,100-volt wire from a chain-link fence on Central Avenue. When Lewis touched the wire, the fence became electrified, sending shock waves through his body, police Lt. Robert Grant said.
In another storm-related injury, a 39-year-old Long Branch man suffered a heart attack as he helped push a stalled car off the street on North Beach in Sea Bright, police said. John Donofrio, Sairs Avenue, was in the intensive care unit of Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank, last night.
One of the reasons for so few injuries was that New Jersey was prepared for the worst. More than 145,000 residents were evacuated, many staying with relatives or taking refuge in one of the 300 shelters converted from schools and municipal buildings.
The front page of the Monmouth County edition of the Asbury Park Press on Saturday, September 28, 1985.
About 14,000 people stayed in shelters in Monmouth and Ocean.
Kean said lives were saved because “people were wonderfully cooperative. We also had a lot of advance warning, and people did what they were asked to do.”
Boardwalk buckles ‘in minutes’
BELMAR ― The surge of water that destroyed almost half of this resort borough’s boardwalk did its damage in minutes, lifting a police car and a 15-foot section of boardwalk across Ocean Avenue.
Huge waves, their tops blown by the wind into a spray that reached 30 feet into the air, destroyed the boardwalk from 16th Avenue south as Hurricane Gloria swept along the coast.
The boardwalk buckled in minutes against the fury of the sea as it reached its height between 11 a.m. and noon yesterday.
Twelve-foot sections of 8-inch-wide boardwalk joists littered the front yards along Ocean Avenue in the south end of the mile-long borough. Wooden benches, smashed to pieces in the foaming surge, and other lumber littered the streets more than a block west of the beach.
Patrolmen Joseph Byrne and Richard Necklen were in their patrol car on Ocean Avenue when a wave broke over the boardwalk and lifted the car, dropping it on a lawn across the street.
Page A13 of the Asbury Park Press on Saturday, September 28, 1985.
Evacuees endure waiting game
Some played card games. Others fidgeted over crossword puzzles. One woman sarcastically sang “The party’s over…”
It was all part of the waiting game at the Southern Regional Middle School in Stafford Township, where an estimated 1,000 evacuees fleeing from Hurricane Gloria restlessly passed the time.
The scene was repeated over and over in evacuation shelters in almost every Ocean County municipality yesterday, as worried residents listened to the sounds of wind and rain, and waited for the all-clear signal.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Today in history: Asbury Park Press NJ archives for Sept. 28