Haddonfield weathers the storm, 449 customers without power

Haddonfield weathers the storm, 449 customers without power

A big storm hit South Jersey on Tuesday, June 23. Many houses lost power, trees fell and debris was scattered everywhere.

Many towns had 100 percent of residents without power, including Chesilhurst and Pine Valley Borough of Camden County and Shamong and Tabernacle Township of Burlington County, according to an Atlantic City Electric outage map.

For Haddonfield, 449 customers were affected out of 5,435, which is about 8 percent, according to the PSE&G website outage map about midday on June 24. However, fallen objects and non-operating traffic lights could still be found throughout the borough late last week.

Of those houses affected, 203 Chews Landing Road was one that lost power when a tree in front of the house fell over and completely ripped out the power lines.

The tree was uprooted from the ground and broke through the cement sidewalk. Luckily, the tree fell away from the home. It ran across the street, into the neighbor’s yard, where it laid on a second tree and some power lines. The power lines were stretched, but they didn’t affect power to the other houses on the road.

“This could’ve been very damaging,” Tom Cuba of PSE&G said. “They’re very lucky. The lines are stretched down, but not damaged it seems.”

Cuba was part of a crew from Somerset brought to Haddonfield to help get the power back for the house and deal with the fallen tree.

The owners of the house were not present, as they were staying at friends. However, Grace Baccare, their daughter, was at the home. She said she was not at home at the time, as she had work, but received several texts and calls from her mother about the fallen tree.

According to Baccare, her mother told her she didn’t hear the tree fall. The storm was so loud she couldn’t hear it but saw it fall. As soon as it fell, the electric was out.

“It was so weird. It (the storm) only lasted 15 minutes or so, but there was so much damage,” Baccare said. “I was a little surprised coming home.”

Baccare had to go around the tree by using other streets to get to her driveway. At her work, The Vault in Runnemede, the lights flickered, but they did not lose power. However, on her way home, she saw a lot of debris.

“There was so much debris, just stuff everywhere,” she said.

Neighbor Beth Carll said she didn’t hear the tree either. Carll’s lights flickered about half a dozen times, but she did not lose power. Her only problem was a dropped call in the morning.

“I didn’t hear the sound of it falling because the rain was coming down so hard,” Carll said.

The tree in front of Carll’s house was also affected by the storm. It was split in half, but still stood upright next to the fallen tree. She and resident Frank Schafer wanted something to be done so the tree did not fall and cause more damage.

Cuba said his crew would tie the tree together as a temporary fix, but they should contact the Public Works Office to have them do a permanent fix.

“The tree is completely split in half. It’s a miracle the tree didn’t come down,” Schafer said.

Schafer is a Haddonfield resident living on Lake Street whose street wasn’t affected too much by the storm, though he did say that with Haddonfield being a tree-lined town, it is expected for fallen branches and trees to happen. However, he was confident that things would be fixed.

“Happy-field wouldn’t allow us to lose electric,” he joked.