Jon Zois called the Princess Cottage home.
The yellow two-story colonial on Raritan Bay had withstood hurricanes and powerful noreasters for more than 150 years. But it would be no match for Superstorm Sandy. Literally ripped in half by the powerful winds and a catastrophic storm surge that battered and scoured New Jersey a decade ago in October 2012, the house on Front Street in Union Beach would become an iconic symbol of the destruction caused by Sandy.
Today, an empty lot remains where bulldozers tore down what had remained of it.
These days, Zois has a place across the street. But he hopes to finally rebuild next year on the spot where his familys famed cottage had stood for so long.
Its nice to live on the waterfront. My daughters in school now. Am I going to move a couple of miles inland to a different town where she doesnt know anybody, just to be just to be safe because Im afraid of the storm? he asked. Not gonna happen.
He has no plans to ever move away.
Okay the storm hit. We rebuilt. We flooded a little bit. I still live here, he said. Im going to live here until they carry me out feet first.What remained of the 'Princess Cottage' in Union Beach, after Sandy ripped the 150-year-old building in half.Aristide Economopoulos | Star-Ledger file photo
He is not alone. Its been 10 years since Sandy pummeled New Jersey, yet the memory of its devastation has done little to discourage people from living near the sea.
More people in bigger homes are now living on tracts of land more valuable than ever places that many experts say will almost certainly flood again amid a growing threat of rising seas and more extreme weather.
Indeed, in the most densely populated state in the nation, a NJ Advance Media analysis of construction and tax records since 2012 found rebuilding and new development has reshaped many of the coastal areas hardest hit by Sandy, including Mantoloking, Beach Haven, Little Egg Harbor, and Point Pleasant, according to building permit records since 2012.
Much has been done to harden the coast and raise houses up higher in potential flood zones in anticipation of what could happen when a storm surge from the next big storm inevitably hits, but still the threat remains.
At the same time, while Sandy showed the state just how vulnerable it was to the fury of coastal storms, the peril of extreme weather is everywhere in an age of climate change as was so graphically demonstrated last year when the remnants of Hurricane Ida roared inland.
Thirty people in New Jersey perished during Ida in nine counties, all of them far from the Shore in towns across the northern part of the state. Some were trapped in their cars and apartments by flash flooding, swept away or drowning in places they never would have thought flooding would have posed a danger.
Despite Idas well-documented wrath, environmentalists complain that New Jersey has done little to address what they say are dangerously outdated standards for dealing with stormwater runoff, which can suddenly turn small streams and dry creeks into raging flash floods when water from heavy rains in highly developed areas has no place to go. Existing rules, they claim, fail to adequately address current storms or protect communities from future, powerful storms spawned by long-term changes to our weather.
Earlier this year, Gov. Phil Murphys administration outlined plans for emergency rules that would affect new construction in flood-prone inland parts of New Jersey that were hard hit by Ida. But amid opposition from some developers, business groups, and labor officials over whether the threat warranted such rule-making, the effort until recently had been put on hold for months.
This should not be a battle, argued Doug OMalley, director of Environment New Jersey. Were going to see more storms.
Elsewhere, meanwhile, the rising seas are now threatening dozens of communities day-to-day not from 100-year storms, but with regular high tides attributed both to the effects of climate change, and by the lunar cycle, experts say. Tidal sunny day flooding in places like Hoboken is getting worse. High tide flooding is likely to increase about eight-fold or more by 2050, particularly in places such as Sandy Hook, Atlantic City and Cape May, according to new predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Still, we keep building, said Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey.
We keep building in areas that we know can flood, she remarked. And we are developing in areas that will flood in the future.BUILDING BOOM
Before it slammed into the state, Sandy was already losing energy, along with its designation as a hurricane, transforming into a post-tropical cyclone similar to a noreaster, but just as powerful as a Category 1 hurricane.
That offered little respite from the still massive and dangerous system which drove what the National Weather Service called a catastrophic storm surge into the New Jersey and New York coastlines. The record flooding was accompanied by heavy winds that brought down trees and power lines across the region, as electrical transformers exploded, lighting up the night in the pouring rain.
Sandy caused an estimated $30 billion in damage to the state. More than 300,000 homes were torn apart or left uninhabitable. Not all of them were on the coast. In South Bergen, the storm would also inundate the low-lying communities including 70% of Little Ferry and Moonachie along the Hackensack River.
Across the state, at least 2.7 million were plunged into darkness with no heat some for more than a week. Thirty-eight people died.
Monmouth and Ocean counties suffered the most overall, especially in terms of power outages, residential damage, residents in shelters and gasoline shortages, according to a Rutgers University study that looked at the immediate storm impacts. Somerset, Middlesex, Union, Hunterdon and Morris counties also suffered significant residential damage, while Hudson, Union, Essex, Middlesex, Bergen and Passaic counties suffered significant commercial damage, noted the universitys School of Public Affairs and Administration in Newark.The sweep of the massive storm surge from Sandy (r.) tore apart landmarks and homes up and down the Jersey Shore, including Seaside Heights (l.).Photo: David Gard | Star-Ledger file photo | Map: NJ Office of GIS | NJAES Office of Research Analytics | Rutgers University
Some residents are not yet back in their homes, while others took years to get there.
Still, recovery overall in New Jersey was relatively quick in some of the hardest-hit coastal counties. Within five years following the storm, Moodys Investors Service was reporting that the Shores recovery had been largely due to quick and robust rebuilding efforts.
An examination of construction permits and property valuations since 2012 underscored those findings. The state data showed the coastal counties most affected by the storm have largely recovered financially because of new construction and appreciation of properties along the Jersey Shore.
In Atlantic County, more than half of the municipalities now have net valuations higher than before Sandy, state data shows. Property values in Ocean County since Sandy still have some catching up to do, with 48% of the communities in a county hard-hit by the storm showing an increase in net valuations.
In Monmouth, nearly all have higher property valuations including Union Beach, a working-class community sandwiched between Keyport and Keansburg.
Prior to Sandy, maybe the highest priced home was $400,000, $500,000 tops, said Union Beach Mayor Charles W. Cocuzza. Now on average, youre seeing them go for $600,000, $700,000, $800,000. It really is night and day. Sandy, you know, before and after.
There hasnt been a boom in the development, said the mayor. He noted the population actually declined since Sandy, from more than 6,200 residents to just about 5,500, in part because some left after their homes were leveled.
I think what you saw in Union Beach was people replacing what ad been destroyed, Cocuzza said.
To be sure, there are still many empty lots in Union Beach including the vacant tract where the Princess Cottage was located. Yet in the years following Sandy through 2021, the last year for which state data is available, 313 building permits have been filed in Union Beach for the construction of one- and two-family homes.
Some 30 miles to the south, Mantoloking in Ocean County was devastated by Sandy.
The storm left the bridge that brings traffic to Route 35 on the barrier island almost completely under water. Refrigerators, cars and even houses could be seen floating away in the bay. Oceanfront homes were swept from their foundations and Lyman Street turned into an inlet between the bay and the ocean, cutting the town in half. About 200 of Mantolokings 521 homes were destroyed outright, had to be knocked down, or simply vanished in the storm, according to Mayor Lance White.
Today, though, evidence of how much Mantoloking not only recovered but thrived is hard to escape. Many of the houses wiped out by the storm have been replaced by sprawling new ones. Once a community of smaller homes and bungalows, there are not have many of those left anymore.
The houses that are going up are typically much, much larger, acknowledged White. And more of them are being used by year-round residents.
How does he know that?
More people are flushing toilets.
Its not the most pleasant statistic in the world, but sewage doesnt lie, explained the mayor, estimating the number of year-round residents in Mantoloking was up about 30%.
Just off the Mantoloking Bridge, a drive down Barnegat Lane reveals modern summer homes with sprawling decks and white trim, clustered together tightly on tracts, each bigger than the next. Since 2013, the year after the storm, there have been building permits issued for 127 new homes in the wealthy beachfront resort community.Complete devastation at the base of the Mantoloking Bridge where the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay meet created a new inlet in Mantoloking.Andrew Mills | Star-Ledger file photo
The mayor, who works with his wife in real estate, said the Mantoloking was always doing pretty well in terms of sales and appraised values. But by April of 2020, less than eight years after Sandy, there was an explosion in the local real estate market partly a result of the fallout from the pandemic, when many people living in New York began working from home and sought refuge from the virus far from the city, buying homes in bucolic areas far from others, or along the coast.
Thats when you began to see multiple offers. Thered be three, four or five offers above ask, White said. People still have confidence that they can live in this part of the world. Youve got the ocean on one side, the bay on the other.
The appeal of living near the water remains strong for those who can afford it.
In nearby Bay Head, an oceanfront colonial with six bedrooms and four bathrooms is being constructed on East Avenue. Its listing agent calls the redeveloped property the Copper House. Perhaps it should have been named for gold. Its price tag is $11.3 million.
According to Clinton Andrews, an associate dean for research and professor of urban planning in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, a lot of money has been spilling out on the Shore since Sandy.
An analysis by one of his graduate students found that for many, the desire to live on or near the water outweighed any concerns about the next big storm.
People love the Shore and are willing to gamble with their money and assets if they can be there, Andrews said.
Bernard Rivera, who lives in Union Beach with his wife, did not move there until three years after Sandy and knew exactly what he was getting into. He has pictures of what his home looked like immediately after the storm, in a neighborhood along the Flat Creek where many houses were never put back together and ultimately abandoned. It did not give him a moments pause.
We came here for the beach, and we needed the fresh air, explained the 58-year-old computer consultant of his decision to buy a home on the bay. That storm was a fluke of nature. It doesnt happen every 1,000 years; 100 years. So, I might be dead, right? If youre going to be scared because of that, you wont have a life.
Not that he isnt prepared. He has suitcases and bags ready in case he ever to quickly evacuate. And, he said, an inflatable raft.People love the Shore and are willing to gamble with their money and assets if they can be there…Clinton Andrews, the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
A reluctance to get out of the way is part of human nature. No one wants to leave their homes and nobody wants to leave their community. However, theres also an economic incentive at play when it comes to waterfront property, noted Andrews. There is far more value in building a home thats close to water than elsewhere.
While the amenity of living there comes with the very real risk of owning property that could be swallowed by the next big wave, the Rutgers professor who has produced models of real estate market impacts of storm events said homebuyers may not properly account for that risk when deciding to buy properties in flood-prone areas. The desire to be on the water typically swamps any fear of losing everything, he said, with buyers closing their eyes to the fact that storms can wipe out everything as easily as the tide erases footsteps in the sand.In Mantoloking, a beachfront house was left standing on pilings after the storm surge from Sandy washed nearly everything else away.John Munson | Star-Ledger file photo
Those rising prices for real estate, at the same time, have also brought greater gentrification to the Shore. Andrews observed that many long-time residents have been displaced by new risk-takers who have further bid up the price of properties and are willing to pay cash not needing the approval of a bank to loan money on what could be a questionable investment.
That view was echoed by Diane Bates, a sociology professor and coordinator for environmental studies at The College of New Jersey.
Not necessarily in places like Mantoloking, because there youve mostly been rebuilding, she said. But when you look at places like Point Pleasant, when you look at Ortley Beach, Seaside and even places that werent totally impacted by Sandy like Asbury Park, what youve seen is theres been a real changeover in the people who are living and purchasing properties on the shore.PERVERSE INCENTIVES
Despite the real fear of communities living on the edge of the next disaster, government policies also continue to encourage the development of building or re-building in flood-prone areas. Andrews calls these perverse incentives such as federally subsidized flood insurance with premiums that are not truly reflective of the actual risk, or the building vast sea walls with public funds to protect communities that incentivize even more development.
Federal flood insurance under the Flood Insurance Act of 1968 offered FEMA-subsidized policies at reduced rates in areas where many homeowners might be unable to get coverage, or could not afford higher-priced private policies. That saved people a lot of money and offered them protection against financial ruin, but it also incentivized people to continue to build along coastal areas.
Efforts to bring those federal policies in line with actual costs have faced political opposition. Amid an outcry by homeowners, legislation has been introduced by several of the states elected representatives in Washington seeking to limit annual rate increases, while capping the profits of private companies that write the policies, and funding construction projects designed to reduce the impact of flooding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it believes insurance coupled with mitigation is key to disaster resilience against climate change.
Especially flooding, the most common and destructive threat, said David Maurstad, a senior official atFEMAs Office of Resilience and Senior Executive of the National Flood Insurance Program. Thats why it is important to stay informed of your risk.
He said with the implementation of the National Flood Insurance Programs new risk rating methodology, the price of a propertys premium is the best indicator of a propertys flood risk. Property owners can use the Find a Provider tool on FloodSmart.gov and contact an insurance agent to learn about their specific propertys flood risk.A vast, multi-million-dollar seawall was built to protect Mantoloking after Sandy.Photo courtesy of Mantoloking Police Chief Stacy Ferris
Hard coastal defenses have also come at taxpayer expense, with critics also questioning whether the public is essentially subsidizing wealthy homeowners and their beach houses.
After Sandy, federal, state and local funding was tapped to reinforce the coast. A vast, multi-million-dollar sea wall was built to protect Mantoloking. Beach refurbishment helped reinforce protective dunes up and down the Jersey Shore.
Still, such projects are seen by some as a temporary solution, as could be seen recently when remnants of Hurricane Ian hammered New Jersey earlier this month. That storm washed away rebuilt dunes all along Long Beach Island, turning them into steep cliffs with 10 to 12-foot vertical drops.
I think you saw that in a lot of places post-Sandy, there was a mentality to put things back to the way they were as quickly as possible, said Peter Kasabach, executive director of non-profit New Jersey Future, an advocacy and research group that promotes smarter land use and growth policies. But he added, Thats not the way we should be viewing risk going forward.
Mantoloking Police Chief Stacy Ferris, who responded to Hurricane Katrina as part of the states Urban Search and Rescue Team, said coastal defense measures also may have created a false sense of security over the last ten years.
I think its the lure of the Jersey Shore. Everybody wants to say were fortifying the structures, building codes have gotten better, houses are being raised. But the sea level is rising, she pointed out.
Ferris added that it may unfortunately take the strength of Category 5 storm to drive the point home.
Thats something that we worry about as emergency responders, she said. I still want people to get out of their houses and evacuate. Were working on that now. Educating the new homeowners that are coming to the Jersey Shore.
State Department of Environmental Protection officials said there was no one single measure that will protect a community from extreme weather and worsening flooding. A spokeswoman noted that the Murphy Administration has been investing in a network of solutions that, combined with beach replenishment and naturally engineered living shorelines, will ensure the protection and resilience of New Jerseys communities and economies in the face of a changing climate.
Working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the administration seeks to facilitate new federal investments of more than $1 billion in the study, design, and construction of hard infrastructure projects. The governors 2023 budget also includes more than $60 million for continued investments in shore protection and flood control projects.
Other measures taken in the wake of Sandy have included changes in building codes and flood maps.
In most of the places where you had complete destruction of your house and yard and got grandfathered in, people have had to elevate their homes, said Bates.
Whole sections of towns in the Bayshore region that were hit hard by Sandys storm surge had to be raised higher off the ground to qualify for flood insurance after flood maps were changed to reflect a new reality. That not only cost tens of thousands of dollars, but it also required that electrical systems and living quarters could no longer be on the ground floor.
That means that everythings (now) at least a two-story house, Bates said.
That has turned once small bungalows into homes that are now quite different. With stairs. A lot of stairs.A construction crew works on raising a house in Union Beach, two years after Sandy.Ed Murray | Star-Ledger file photo
While raising houses along the coast does offer protection, Kasabach said one of the knee-jerk kind of reactions was we can just build higher, ignoring whats going on in the rest of the community, when major storms not only take out homes, but power lines, streets, schools and stores.
People have just protected their individual houses a little bit more than they were protected before, he said.HOLDING BACK THE SEA
Environmentalists like OMalley said that instinct after Sandy was to immediately rebuild, as if doing so would somehow scare away the Big Bad Wolf when the next big one hit.
Stronger than the storm, they said. But weve built back the Shore as if Sandy was a one-off, and every year the memory fades a little more, he said.
Its a potential disaster in the making. While no part of the state has been immune to the impact of severe weather, OMalley argued that the clock is ticking for the Shore.
We will see future storms that will be catastrophic, and we need to not put people in harms way, he said, pointing to the terrible toll taken by Hurricane Ian this past month that flattened whole communities in Florida.
According to a new study released by the Department of Environmental Protection earlier this week, a Sandy-like storm surge event occurring in 2070 could cause $45 billion in property damages just in four of the states coastal and inland waterway regions.
And the threat is not only from stormy weather. New Jersey is among the states seeing some of the highest increases in high-tide flooding in the nation, according to William Sweet, an oceanographer at NOAA who spoke with reporters earlier this year.
These locations typically might have experienced maybe one day of high tide flooding 20 years ago, but now high tide flooding, as in many other places, is becoming routine and problematic, he said. Sea level rise impacts are occurring now and are growing rapidly, which is complicating preparedness planning.
Despite the high cost, experts say coastal protective measures have had an impact.
Stewart Farrell, director of the Stockton University Coastal Research Center, said the parts of the state that suffered the most from Sandy were fairly delineated, while Long Beach Island, where three federal beach restoration projects were completed by 2012, was better protected. Those projects completed before the storm provided wider beaches, taller dunes and a very consistent elevation. Essentially, they served as castle walls that were less likely to be breached by the monster from the sea.
There was basically no wave damage in the towns where the projects were built, he said. But there was massive damage by the storm surge, particularly at the south end of the island, where the dunes were pretty narrow, and the beaches were narrower. There, he said the sand was washed right across the elements of the Barnegat Bay. Along with lots of stuff
In Monmouth County, an enormous amount of damage was done in the boardwalk towns of Belmar, Spring Lake, Avon by the Sea, Ocean Grove, and a little bit of Asbury Park despite a big restoration project being completed in 1999 in Asbury Park, Manasquan, Long Branch, up to Sandy Hook National Seashore, said Farrell. There, the open recreational beaches in those towns allowed the ocean to come in with the storm surge and the waves just rolled across the wider beaches, destroying boardwalks and flooding in the interior parts of Belmar and Spring Lake.A wall of sea foam rushes down the boardwalk as Sandy strikes Seaside Heights on October 29, 2012.David Gard | Star-Ledger file photo
Spring Lake lost the entire three miles of boardwalk. The pieces, there were big pieces, but they couldnt pick them up. They had to demo everything and rebuild it, he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a report last month outlining a proposed $52 billion plan to safeguard the New York an New Jersey metropolitan area from storm-related flooding bolstered by beach defenses that pre-date Sandy making progress in coastal communities.
Earlier this summer, the first contract was awarded by the agency for the construction of a beach berm with a planted dune and terminal groins to protect Union Beach, at a cost of $50 million.
As for the stormwater rules intended as a response to inland flooding that caused so much destruction and a high death toll during Ida far from the coast, the administration now says it will move forward with plans to to update those rules, although not on an emergency basis, as originally proposed. The proposal, unveiled by the state Department of Environmental Protection, would update flood map and rainfall data for new construction along rivers and streams for the first time since 1999, increasing inland areas included in flood zones and imposing new standards for construction there.
Is New Jersey better positioned today for future storms?
Well, in terms of stepping back from the ocean, no, answered Farrell. But in terms of municipal code officials enforcing very rigorously the accepted FEMA and other building codes for wave action, he said the houses on Long Beach Island mostly withstood the storm.
Very few of them failed. The houses were still there, you just needed a 30-foot extension ladder to get to the front door, he said.
While the tougher building codes will help harden the housing infrastructure, though, Farrell said we still will lose against the ocean in the end.
You cant hold out the ocean. It will win, he said. But we can hold it back quite a bit.
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Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL.
Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @stevenrodasnj.