NJ Transit's Morris & Essex Line rail service, including the Gladstone Branch, and Montclair Branch service is to remain suspended today
N.J. Gov. Chris Christie in this September, 2011 Star-Ledger file photo. Christie said the state was prepared for the storm, even though his own home had no power as of Sunday.TRENTON — It happened so fast, the governor didn’t have time to warn everybody to get the hell off the highway.
Transportation and utility crews scrambled to make roads passable and homes livable Sunday in the aftermath of a pre-Halloween nor’easter that dumped too much wet snow too soon and snapped branches like matchsticks.
Gov. Chris Christie, who famously told sun worshipers to "get the hell off the beach" as Hurricane Irene chugged toward New Jersey two months earlier, was himself without power at his Morris County home.
"It’s dark, and it’s cold. It’s just me and (8-year-old daughter) Bridget, and we’re sitting in the dark," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
His power remained off Sunday.
NJ Transit’s Morris & Essex Line rail service, including the Gladstone Branch, and Montclair Branch service is to remain suspended today as crews remove hundreds of toppled trees and repair miles of damage to the overhead wires that power the trains, officials said. NJ Transit is cross-honoring tickets for all of its modes of transportation today to give stranded customers more riding options.
On the roads, an army of 1,169 state Department of Transportation workers and contractors responded to the storm with nearly 900 plows and salt spreaders, DOT spokesman Joe Dee said.
The DOT reported 253 roadway incidents between Saturday morning and last night, including vehicle accidents, downed tree limbs and wires and flooding.
That number was down to 20 by last night, and today’s commute was generally expected to be smooth on the roadways, although potential problems remained on Route 206 in Princeton Township and Route 28 in Bridgewater, Dee said.
Unlike Irene, which chewed up New Jersey roads, the problem the weekend nor’easter caused was more a matter of access to roads because of downed trees and live wires.
The main roads were mostly clear by late Sunday afternoon, but there were secondary road closures and widespread power outages in Essex, Passaic and Bergen counties, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Management, which coordinated the state’s response and managed the State Emergency Operations Center in West Trenton.
Dee said DOT crews and contractors prepared for the storm, and had even begun salting at 9 a.m. Saturday and plowing in some areas around noon.
"It came earlier, and a lot the numbers kept growing, in terms of how much (snow) we were going to get," he said. "But we were ready."
But no amount of planning could have fully prepared crews for how many trees and large limbs would topple this weekend, leaving live wires flailing like angry snakes and blocking access to roads.
In some areas, the DOT crews and contractors couldn’t push snow from the shoulders of roads because they were blocked by trees, Dee said.
"The same guys that were helping during the hurricane and the same guys that were plowing (Saturday) are now moving trees," he said last night.
Christie took to the airwaves Saturday night, appearing on television and radio to discuss the storm.
Asked if the storm caught everyone off guard, he told 1010 WINS radio: "Certainly the amount of it did. We were ready. We started preparing 48 hours ago for the storm. We had all our equipment and our contractors ready with plows and salt and sand and in that respect we were ready to go."
By: Mike Frasinelli and Chris Megerian/The Star-Ledger
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