10/29/2012 - On Monday, October 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, NJ and battered the east coast of the United States. The super storm, nicknamed "Frankenstorm" left a large path of destruction up and down the east coast, leaving nearly 100 people dead in its wake. While New Jersey and New York suffered the brunt of Hurricane Sandy's destruction, locally municipalities had to deal with high sustained winds, even higher wind gusts, power outages and flooding concerns. To deal with the storms predicted destruction, Whitman Fire Chief Timothy Grenno ordered all Whitman Fire-Rescue personnel, 20-full time firefighters as well as several call-firefighters, in to work at 0800 hours on Monday. Many firefighters worked 48-hours straight during the storm. Whitman's Emergency Operations Center at the Whitman Fire Station was staffed by local emergency agency representatives, Whitman CERT team members and a National Grid representative. At the height of the storm, over 3,600 of Whitman's 6,100 National Grid customers were without power. Most had power restored within a day, while others had to wait a couple of days for the lights to come back on. Whitman firefighters responded to at least three calls for trees that fell into homes in the town. One on Green Acres Drive drove branches through the roof of a garage, and into the dining room walls, knocking over a china cabinet and causing structural damage. Two other incidents involving trees into homes occurred on Candlewick Lane and Auburn Street. Minor damage was reported at those two addresses. On Washington Street in Whitman, a National Grid representative in a vehicle who was standing by a transformer fire was trapped in his vehicle when a live wire landed on it. The worker was uninjured. Crews responded to a countless number of wire and tree down calls throughout the storm. The day after the storm, Whitman's Police Station suffered a lightning strike from a passing storm, which damages the new radio console in their dispatch center. No serious storm related injuries were reported in the town of Whitman, while the death toll from Hurricane Sandy's path of destruction as of Thursday, November 1st was 98 deaths. The death toll was expected to rise, as search and rescue operations continue in places like New York and New Jersey. *NOTE* Some images taken with "Camera+" application for iPhone 4S.
