As you know, our town went through a rather bizarre storm last week. We encountered full power outage across the entire town, trees blown down, roads impassable, and property damage. I took a drive around town on Tuesday night at the tail end of the storm to check on the folks and what I saw was a lot of damage and nature in chaos, but what I also observed were neighbors helping each outer out, making sure people were ok and folks pitching in to clear trees and debris. I could not have been more proud to be a Shamongian that night.
As the week wore on, the power outage become a huge nuisance to people to the extent that if you did not have a generator you were buying water and showering elsewhere. My fear was if the outage kept on we would be experiencing health and sanitation issues. Luckily and with much cajoling by Sue Onorato (your town manager), Atlantic Electric got power restored to most of the town by Friday night. This was probably as long as it could have gone without having problems.
I want to point out that the township Department of Public Works (Snookie and Gary) worked around the clock to clear our streets and help the power company remove trees leaning on wires. Stanley Rowe (your Office of Emergency Management Coordinator) swung into action and started arranging for services to be brought in to town, and Mrs. Onorato and Mrs. Valenzano manned the phones to get the Red Cross to bring water and the electric company to get power on to the businesses and traffic lights. In all, I want to just say “thank you” to all of you who pitched in and helped out. As mayor, I got to brag to other mayors over the weekend just what a fantastic group of people live in Shamong. Again, thank you all.
Mayor Ken Long
