Last week’s Tabernacle Township Committee meeting began with a somber moment of silence conducted by the town’s new Mayor Stephen Lee to honor those who lost their lives during winter storm Jonas.
There were approximately 60 storm-related deaths nationwide over an eight-day period, according to Lee.
The storm was a record setting one that caused many regions throughout the country much distress. At least 14 states received more than a foot of snow. It was the single biggest snowstorm on record for at least six locations in four states — New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
The storm also brought along hurricane-like wind gusts, high tides and coastal flooding causing major damage to several towns bordering the ocean.
“It makes you think about how blessed we are to be here in Tabernacle. We had no fatalities, we had an emergency operation system able to get the job done in terms of getting the roads ready, and our schools were ready to go. We were ready here in Tabernacle,” Lee said.
Lee reached out to township administrator Doug Cramer early Friday before the storm hit to set a game plan regarding how they would approach things and followed up with him on Sunday to see how the process had gone.
“After my call with Doug, I told my boys they were guaranteed to have school on Monday,” Lee said. “So much for that!”
All four members of the new township committee focused their closing reports on thanking the members of the public works department, the fire department and the rescue squad for a job well done.
There was a great communication plan in place that kept track of where everyone was so they were all accounted for during the dangerous weather.
Cramer gave special thanks to the rescue squad for keeping everyone fed and for shoveling the walkways at the municipal building so he did not have to come back after pushing snow all day.
Cramer dedicated much of his free time on the weekend to lending a helping hand; Committeeman Joseph Barton spotted him working the front-end loader on Saturday and cleaning up the schools on Sunday.
“It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time to do what they did,” Committeewoman Kim Brown said.
Brown said the schools were all ready to be open on Monday morning but had to be shut down to follow suit with the Lenape Regional High School District.
Other municipalities were not as fortunate as Tabernacle and were still scurrying to get roads ready when the work-week began, Brown said.
One thing that particularly stuck out to Committeeman Richard Franzen were the updates on the OEM website.
“They updated us about eight to 10 times to basically tell us what was going on, and I found that to be so helpful, I’m so glad they did it,” he said.
Barton was out and about on Saturday during the storm, and he was impressed with how well staffed the EMS building and the fire house was. He was also impressed with how well they ate.
“It sure smelled good in there. The fire department was cooking a pot roast, the EMS building was serving chilli and getting ready for pulled pork later that evening,” Barton said.
Barton also thanked Atlantic City Electric for the great job it did.
Considering Tabernacle is basically 50 square miles of trees, not experiencing any major power outages during a storm like this was a remarkable feat when the №1 cause of outages of electric utility distribution lines are trees, he said.
The Board of Public Utilities requires the company to trim back the trees near the power lines every four years, and it has surpassed that standard over its tenure with Tabernacle.
