Community Corner
After Irene: Journey Down a Dark Rt. 36
Traffic signals and street lights out as power outages plague stretch from Route 36 and Thompson Ave. in North Middletown through Highlands-Sea Bright bridge; most Route 35 signals operating after hurricane leaves area.
If nothing else, traveling east or west on a darkened Route 36 on Sunday night was just plain eerie.
Less than 24 hours after Hurricane Irene struck New Jersey, motorists could drive east and west along Middletown's stretch of Route 36 without stopping at a traffic signal.
That's because none of those lights at the township's intersections with the state highway — except the one at Thompson Avenue in the North Middletown section — were operating as of 10 p.m.
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Electric power was absent along both the northbound and southbound sides of the the four-lane highway. The streets lights were out. Most of the homes or businesses near the roadway — all the way from Route 36 and Palmer Avenue down to the new Highlands-Sea Bright bridge (now the Capt. Joseph Azzolina Memorial Bridge) — disappeared into the darkness.
One exception was Romeo's Plaza in Port Monmouth, just east of Wilson Avenue. The Super Foodtown and a pizzeria in that shopping center, bordering Atlantic Highlands, shone like beacons in the night.
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Motorists expecting to cross over Route 36 from north to south, and vice versa, faced roadblocks preventing such moves. Earlier in the day, township police had placed traffic cones or wooden horses in the middle of the intersections to discourage crossing the highway.
Outside Middletown's borders, the highway's intersections with First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands and with Bay and Miller avenues in Highlands were also blocked off by cones placed in the middle of Route 36.
Meanwhile, motorists along Harmony Road continued to be directed by Middletown Township police around a detour where tree limbs had closed the thoroughfare between Pearl and Kinkade drives.
Out on Route 35, most of the traffic lights operated as usual except for the two intersections where that highway meets Twin Brooks Avenue and Woodland Drive. Earlier flooding near Twin Brooks Avenue had dried up as of 9:30 p.m., but there was a felled tree that closed off one lane in that vicinity.
Farther south, one of the northbound lanes on Route 35 near Apple Farm Road had been closed by police, who set up cones near the Normandy Road overpass to shift vehicular traffic.
A number of businesses along Route 35 had re-opened by Sunday night including Friendly's, Burger King, Shop-Rite, and the two 7-11s on both the northbound and southbound sides.
Navesink River Road westbound to the township's River Plaza section also had been closed off by police. The dam at Shadow Lake had burst and created a sinkhole and flooding on Hubbard Avenue near the River Plaza Elementary School. Traffic cones also blocked access to Hubbard Avenue where it meets West Front Street.
Arteries into and out of Middletown were not easy to traverse and officials all day continued to ask people to stay off them.
