Bennies stayed home

BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer

One Jersey Shore visitor last weekend wasn't so welcome.

Remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto brought hurricane-force winds and almost 3 inches of rainfall to Ocean County between Friday and Sunday mornings, according to the National Weather Service.

"We had a lot of power outages," police Capt. Douglas Kinney said.

JCP&L estimates over 185,000 customers lost power sometime during the three-day storm, said JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano.

The last of the utility's customers regained power as late as Monday night, he said.

"We experienced outages throughout the region, including Brick," Morano said. "There were hundreds of lines down throughout the service area. You can't diminish the fact that this was a major storm event."

The storm moved more slowly and stayed in the tristate area longer than had been predicted, Morano said.

A high pressure system off Maine's coast along with Ernesto's driving winds were the cause of the 50 mph gusts clocked in Point Pleasant, according to the National Weather Service.

JCP&L provided area customers with water and ice at NJ Transit Point Pleasant Beach station's parking lot on Route 35 on Sunday, Morano said.

At 10 a.m. Sunday, 13,000 JCP&L customers were without power; that figure dropped to 3,000 by Monday morning, Morano said.

"It's the nature of a storm," Morano said. "We worked around the clock through last night to restore service."

Except for storm watchers, beach-goers stayed home for the first half of the three-day holiday weekend, acting Superintendent of Recreation Andrea Zapcic said.

"It was light," she said of the crowds. "The surf was very, very rough. We were red-flagged."

No one is allowed in the ocean during red flag conditions, but Zapcic said lifeguards had some trouble keeping surfers looking for good waves out of the water.

"They enter on our beach but they surf in front of the private beach," she said. "Technically, it's not our territory, but it's kind of a public safety issue. We wouldn't let them drown, obviously. But they think we have no right to tell [them] what to do when they're on a private beach."

"We did experience flooding, but nothing major," Kinney said. "We didn't do any evacuations. We had a lot of downed power lines but nothing major."

Eight special police officers were called in to direct traffic around downed power lines on several Brick roadways, including those on Baywood Boulevard, Pilot Drive, Princeton Avenue and Tanager Way, Kinney said.