Storm gobbled up Brick beaches

The 15-foot breakers that slammed over Brick Township's beaches during the recent back-to-back nor'easters took their toll.

Three days of nor'easters pummeled the Jersey Shore and Brick Township, leaving little sand on the beaches this early in the season. Township officials have applied for nearly $2 million in federal disaster funds. There was little beach left on Brick Beach III by Friday morning. Spindrift blew right up to the dunes. The walkway that was once level with the beach looked like a dock without stairs.

"There is now a 3-foot drop on the walkway," Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis said. "People used to be able to step off that walkway and go right on the beach. Now there is no beach left."

Township officials estimated the damage from the nearly three-day event at $1,940,660. That included $1,610,900 in beach erosion and $267,600 in dune destruction.

Brick sent the paperwork for reimbursement for the damages to the Ocean County Office of Emergency Management at 10 a.m. Monday, just before the state's noon deadline, Acropolis said.

PHOTOS BY PATRICIA A. MILLER "Luckily, we were ahead of the curve," said Acropolis, who was at the ocean and bay beaches early Friday morning. "We went down there during the storm. We went back on Sunday when things calmed down to assess the damage."

The township-owned beachfront buildings — including a new lifeguard headquarters at Brick Beach I — weathered the onslaught of wind and water, the mayor said.

"Our building at Brick Beach III did not sustain any damage," he said. "The new roof worked like a charm. The dunes did what they were supposed to do. They stopped the water from hitting the building."

Acropolis said some of the sand that was washed away will eventually come back, but not all of it.

"A lot of the sand is just offshore," he said. "A lot of that will come back in. You can almost equate this to the storm of 1992. If you walked out the back of the Thunderbird [motel], there was a 6-foot drop."

The township plans to bring in machinery to move some of the sand, now that the damage claims have been filed, Acropolis said.

"From our perspective, it could have been a lot worse," he said. "Nobody got hurt."

A damaging nor'easter this early in the season does not bode well for the coming winter months, Acropolis said.

"My grandmother used to talk about the chestnuts and acorns," he said. "If you see a lot of acorns on the ground, if it's a heavy acorn harvest, you're going to see a heavy winter. If anybody has walked around some of the oak trees in town … I hope that does not tell us about what's happening in the future."