THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT ATLANTIC NORTHEAST STORM, MARCH, 1962: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED, AND WHAT WOULD THE DAMAGE BE IF ANOTHER CLASS 5 STORM OCCURRED TODAY?

The March, 1962 Storm was the worst northeast storm that occurred along the East Coast of the United States in modern time, particularly along the New Jersey coast. On the Northeast Storm scale, this storm was a Class 5 (Halsey, 1986). A typical low pressure system formed off the southern coast of the US and churned northward. A very large stationary Canadian high pressure system over the OH-PA-NY area blocked the low pressure system from moving north or east, and thus the storm stalled and grew, lasting six days with more than five high tides over 5 ft in range. These successive high tides kept battering the coastline, destroying the beach and almost all the dunes, and then toppling some homes and sweeping others into Barnegat Bay. Temporary inlets formed in Harvey Cedars, a Navy destroyer was beached on the Holgate Unit below Beach Haven, and the only way rescuers in helicopters could gain reference to the ground was to follow leaning telephone poles down the center of Long Beach Island, which was a flat sea of sand.

An analyses of historic land and aerial photos of Long Beach Island where the same localities can be revisited today reveals that most of the vulnerability experienced by those locales in 1962 has really changed little. Following the 1962 storm, FEMA enacted regulations that mandate houses located in V-zones and A-zones be elevated on pilings. Long Beach Township made it policy that lots in back of houses be elevated and that some dunes be built in front of street ends. The Army Corps of Engineers pursued beach nourishement along most of the island. Beyond those measures, little else has been done to protect against a similar storm in the future. Future storm damage may be translated behind the first line of houses on pilings, and, considering the amount of landscaping timbers and decorations, there will be huge rafts of debris that will batter structures and clog roads and evacuation routes. Increasing sea level rise will also affect the height of waves during storms. All of this does not bode well for the future, particularly because there has been an explosion of building on this island.