In Barnegat, Waretown 'Bayfront Took a Tremendous Hit'

Efforts to notify residents of the potential danger of Hurricane Sandy to the bayfront area in Barnegat and Waretown paid off, with only one group in the Creekview Road area requesting a "high water rescue," on Sunday according to Barnegat officials.

Barnegat police Lt. Keith Germain told Patch in an interview at the township's operation center today that police were "aggressive" with their notifications of people on Saturday and Sunday, and people living in those areas listened.

Today, Germain said police were mostly waiting for the waters to recede, before they could even begin to discuss getting people back into their homes.

Wireless service was spotty throughout Southern Ocean County.

In a prepared statement from Verizon issued earlier toay, Nicola Palmer, vice president-network and chief technical officer for Verizon Wireless, wrote: "The Verizon Wireless network withstood the severe weather along the Eastern Seaboard resulting from Hurricane Sandy and is functioning solidly -- particularly in the hardest-hit areas in the Northeast, where more than 94 percent of our cell sites are up and running - and all our switching and data centers are functioning normally.  Although our network teams are working to restore areas where customers may be experiencing some service issues, the majority of the problems are 'out-of-service' sites resulting from multiple factors, including telecommunications provider service disruption, power outages and flooding in low-lying areas."

Mayor Al Cirulli said the spotty cell service was a "real problem," as he tried to reach other township officials to discuss matters from different emergency management positions across town.

Regardless of the communication and technology issues, Cirulli said he was happy with the rescue response.

Looking ahead, he said "the bayfront took a tremendous hit.  There is so much debris, we have to wait for the water to recede and then there will be the cleanup."