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Heavy Tuesday night rains, an astronomical high tide, and an on-shore wind and tidal flow caused all three of Asbury Park’s coastal lakes to rise considerably and by Wednesday morning Wesley Lake reached across to flood cars and businesses along Lake Avenue.

The storm brought between four- to six-inches of rainfall to the area within a period of a few hours, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Garret Giberson, a spokesman for the Asbury Park Fire Department, said it was the heaviest rain he has seen fall in a short period of time within the last 12 years.

The city had flooding issues along Lake Avenue, from Wesley Grove to Press Plaza, Giberson said.

Although Wesley Lake has a spillway with a control gate, during periods of a higher than normal tide, the ocean washes up over the spillway and, even though the gates are closed, nothing can be done to stop the rising water from coming over the spillway, he said.

The flood waters along Lake Avenue spared Nicole Chabot-Waugh’s late model Dodge pickup truck, but her neighbors were not so lucky.

“Our neighbor came out and said the water was up to her knees when she want to get into her car,” said Chabot-Waugh, a 30-year-old resident of the 550 Cookman Avenue apartment complex.

When Rachel Lyon, 32, walked out of her apartment at 7 a.m. to catch a flight for work, the entire street was covered in water and her late model Volkswagen Beetle was flooded up to the headlights. She moved it and called a tow company to take it to a mechanic so her insurance company can assess the damage.

She is also a resident of the 550 Cookman complex.

“I know at least six other people in the building have the same issue. The girl that lives next to me just finished paying off her Volvo, too. It sucks,” Lyon said.

Lyon’s car was parked in one of the spots on the lake side of the street, but none of the cars in the lot next to the complex took on water, she said, and now she is considering coughing up the dough to rent a spot.

“They charge $100 a month to park in the lot, which is insane, but it might be worth it.”

“I’m concerned about future flooding. All anyone keeps telling me is ‘it was the high tide and the full moon’,” said Jen Lampert, a partner in the Asbury Park Festhalle & Biergarten located at the corner of Lake Avenue and Press Plaza.  The business, which is still under construction, took on about three feet of water.

By 10:30 a.m., the water level had been pumped out to a remaining 19 inches [shown at left] and Lampert had made a deal with other business owners who share a contiguous basement space to pitch in to pay local firefighters to help pump out the basement faster so work could resume.

Although storms like this don’t happen too often, Giberson did note they are becoming more and more frequently and storm mitigation has to be a conversation that takes place not only in Asbury Park, but in Neptune, Ocean Grove and other surrounding communities that are affected, he said.

“This is all part of the mitigation process that started with [hurricanes] Irene and Sandy, it’s just a matter of getting the funds to do what we need to do to avoid this,” he said.

Lunar high tide coupled by a regular high tide and rainwater kept the Ocean high for a couple of hours, and while each coastal lake has its own unique problems, methods of increasing storage through dredging, replacing bulkheads and updating flume gates to open from the top down as opposed to the bottom up would help mitigate the rising water, according to City Engineer Joe Cunha.

“This will never change unless major construction is done to all three of them, there is nothing anyone can do until we get tens of millions of dollars to fix it,” he said.

The city has identified trouble spots for areas that suffer from natural disasters and storms and submitted a hazard mitigation plan to the Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management, the first step to obtain much needed grant funds for storm mitigation, Cunha said.

City Manager John “Jack” Kelly said moving forward, he would like to see someone from the city’s office of emergency management monitor weather events and that it would be “prudent” of the city to set up a system to notify residents of future storm hazards and weather events.

In addition to flooding near Wesley Lake, most of the intersections west of Memorial Drive were flooded as well. Firefighters responded to the 1500 block of Bangs Avenue where two individuals had to be rescued from two separate vehicles that got caught in the flood waters, Giberson said.

Several people had to be evacuated from 1512 Bangs Avenue due to flooding in their home and are now staying with family in Neptune, said Giberson.

[Photo at top provided by City Manager John “Jack” Kelly.]

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