Extreme tidal flooding impacts South Jersey's oldest more than most

By Joe Martucci (Press Meteorologist) & Charles Wohlforth (Climate Central)

This story was produced through a collaboration between Climate Central and Press of Atlantic City.

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ATLANTIC CITY — “I went to work, and should have stayed home,” said Dorris Aultman, 76, of Atlantic City, speaking of the day in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy hit.

Aultman, 66 at the time and still working at the casinos, was living alone in a one-story, ranch-style home on New York Avenue.

“I got back here. It didn’t come into the house (yet),” Aultman recalled. “I threw some stuff into a big plastic bag, a credit card and a few clothes and walked into that water, which was very dangerous.”

She was able to get off her front porch easily, navigating the two small steps from her front door to the ground. The challenge began after that, when she stepped into the fast-moving floodwaters.

“The current was so powerful, I could hardly balance myself,” Aultman said.The entire section of the city was underwater, everywhere north of Arctic Avenue on New York Avenue, with a record tide of more than 8 feet above an average low tide.

In 2017, Dorris Aultman had her Atlantic City house raised, five years after it had taken on water during Superstorm Sandy. The project was in part paid for by FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Four steps take the 76-year-old up to a landing, where she can rest if need be. Another three steps take her to her porch. Note that the house number was remove in post-production. 
Joe Martucci

Sandy was an historic event, but in Atlantic City — and the neighboring counties on the Shore — the threat of high water from storms is growing. And seniors such as Aultman are increasingly at risk.

Sea level rise affects almost every facet of life here, from the economy to culture and the physical landscape. To better understand how the sea will reshape our communities, The Press of Atlantic City and Climate Central teamed up to examine these challenges.

In South Jersey, senior citizens live in areas subject to flooding at above-average numbers, including the most frail elders, 85 years or older, who can be difficult to evacuate and can face health setbacks when they do.

A problem now, a bigger one in the future

Roughly 11,000 people in Cape May, Atlantic and Ocean counties 85 years or older would experience some flooding if a storm the magnitude of another Sandy were to strike, according to a Climate Central analysis. Of those, an estimated 1,853 people at or above 85 years old currently live in areas that would be have at least 3.5 inches of water on the ground, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. That includes much of Brigantine, Atlantic City, Ventnor City, Margate City, Ocean City and Long Beach Township.

nd with rising seas and more intense hurricanes — trends largely driven by climate change —that flooding scenario is becoming ever more likely.

As Aultman fought through the surging waters a decade ago, instinct took hold, she said. She followed a fence, heading to the Old Soldiers Memorial Building. However, water got into that building. So, the National Guard arrived and evacuated her and others to Pleasantville High School, where she stayed for four days.

That four-block walk from her home to safety is a journey she will never forget.

“It was a situation I don’t want to have another time,” Aultman said.

Unfortunately, scientists predict that storm-driven coastal flooding will recur, and become more frequent, in these New Jersey counties heavily populated by vulnerable seniors. A 2019 report by the Rutgers Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel called it “virtually certain that future sea level rise will cause greater overall storm flood events.”

Climate change is contributing to more powerful hurricanes and higher sea levels. On the Jersey shore, it rose 17.6 inches from 1911 to 2019, according to the Rutgers report. Of that, roughly 45% was man-made and 55% naturally occurring, but the man-made component is accelerating.

Areas in blue indicate approximately the greatest extent of flooding occurred with the Oct. 29, 2012, high tide in Atlantic City. New York Avenue, where Doris Aultman lives, is highlighted in red.
Joe Martucci

If human carbon emissions continue on a business-as-usual path, flooding now considered disastrous will become routine, said Reza Marsooli, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. With water levels higher, even less severe storms will cause more flooding on the shore.

Marsooli projects that a New Jersey coastal flood with a 1% chance of occurring today will gradually increase to a 100% chance of occurring every year by the end of the century. The biggest reason, his research team found, is because of the rising seas.

For the New Jersey area, climate change’s impacts on sea level rise will have the greatest impact on how hurricanes impact the region in the future, Marsooli said.

“So it means that for our region, sea level rise is really a bigger problem in the future,” Marsooli said.

In Atlantic City, Bill LaBarre, 79, a lifelong resident who lives with his wife on North Newtown Place, said the first floor of their house is nine steps above street level. During Sandy, the first floor was fine. However, he had 3½ feet of water in the basement, losing the freezer, washer and dryer.

They were lucky. Their son, Chuck LaBarre, who is Margate’s current Emergency Management Coordinator on Absecon Island, was able to help them collect their belongings and evacuate to the son’s Downbeach house for 10 days.

However, the comfort and assistance of family is not always available.“It’s not that they’re not intelligent enough to leave,” Mike Cahill, chief of the Ventnor City Fire Department, said of the elderly. “Half the time they don’t have a place to go because they don’t have anybody left.”The analysis by Climate Central identified 10 census tracts, relatively permanent small subdivisions of a county, of the South Jersey shore with the highest concentration of residents 85 years or older, where elders aging in place would more than likely require evacuation by emergency services or third parties during a significant flood event. Ocean City between 18th and 32nd streets had the highest number, with 17.7% of the population 85 or older. Ventnor City between Suffolk and Jackson avenues is the third highest, with an estimated 11.6%.

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During Sandy, the Ventnor City Fire Department made multiple rescues, including seniors, in town.

“We’d get calls that ‘my aunt is somewhere. ... When are you getting them?’’” Cahill recalled. “I said, ‘When are you coming?’”But at a certain point, it became even too dangerous for the fire department, he said.

Move somebody, lose somebody

Even seniors who might otherwise be safe at home in a flood face dangers if they’re relying on medical devices that need electricity, so they must be rescued, according to researchers at the University of Iowa.

That research also found that 12% of those over 80 lacked mobility to evacuate on their own and 13% would be unable to hear sirens or commands from emergency personnel.

Michael Greenberg, an expert in environmental health and risk analysis at Rutgers University, studied the impact of Sandy on seniors. Tragically, he said, nine seniors died just from falling down stairs because they didn’t have a working flashlight when the power went out.

“People become more frail, and that manifests itself typically after the age of 75,” Greenberg said. “So the kinds of things you could do during a hurricane are hard to do even when you have time to prep. And that has to do with the fact that your muscles are not as strong, your heart is not as strong, all sorts of things that come with age that seem to suddenly sneak up on us and we just can’t do what we thought we could do.”

The Ventnor Fire Department rescued seniors and put them in military vehicles for transport to an auditorium, Cahill said. In one instance, an elderly woman living in a home elevated 4 feet above curb level had 6 inches of water in her home when rescuers arrived, Cahill said.

Because pressure from the waters outside had wedged the door shut, rescuers had to instruct the woman to go upstairs so they could blow the door open.

“We do the best we can because they’re taxpayers and members of the community,” Cahill said.

But even a successful rescue can be stressful. Dr. David Dosa, a gerontologist and associate professor of medicine at Brown University who conducted studies on Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana during 2005 and Hurricane Ida in Florida during 2021, found the evacuation of nursing homes led to far more deaths in the months after the storms than the number of people who had died while the disaster was ongoing.

“The common refrain was, ‘Every time we move somebody, we lose somebody,’” Dosa said.

For every solution, a cost

Once Sandy passed, the next challenge for many at the shore, including the elderly, was what to do with the new reality that their homes weren’t high enough to combat the storm surge — a problem that will only worsen in the decades to come. Sandy damaged or destroyed 364,000 housing units, and 22,000 of those were rendered uninhabitable, according to information released at the time by Governor Chris Christie’s office.

The increased threat has prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to require some homes to be elevated far above ground level. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is proposing that homes in tidal areas be set 5 feet above the FEMA level for a 100-year storm under a new “Inundation Risk Zone” to prevent against extreme flooding.

For seniors, that means more steps to climb and more money to protect their homes. Seniors adding a flight or more of stairs to the front door can become isolated at home, as the climb becomes a barrier to casual trips, said Anamaria Bukvic, a researcher at Virginia Tech, who studied the problem in Cape May County.

Aultman had her Atlantic City home, which is in a flood zone, raised. FEMA approved up to $140,000 to raise her home. Four steps take her up to a landing, where she can rest if need be. Another three steps take her up to her porch. She says she believes she’s safe there but can’t be too sure.

Fury Feraco, 90, has his house atop a 10-foot high dune on Bay Drive in Lower Township, right along the Delaware Bay. However, getting to the beach from his house is not so simple due to ongoing erosion. Now, the bottom of his steps hover 3 feet above the beach. When the tide rises on a calm sunny day, the waters rise nearly as high as they once did during an average storm.

A storm with the intensity of Sandy would cause considerable damage, he said.

While he’s asked the state and township about beach replenishment, he was advised instead to invest in a bulkhead.

“Unfortunately, 200 feet of bulkhead is above my paygrade,” said Feraco, who bought property 57 years ago, when it was on a dirt path.

Insurance won’t cover the cost. So, to step onto the beach on his beachfront property, he cut a path through a bamboo forest to his neighbor’s house. The neighbors allow him to use their stairs to get onto the beach.

Preparation is critical

Despite the challenges for town officials, many refer back to the state’s Register Ready program as an effort to identify seniors who will need special assistance.

Billed as the first step in emergency preparedness for individuals who may need assistance in a disaster, it’s a voluntary, confidential registry that can be accessed at registerready.nj.gov.

The Register Ready program was started in Atlantic County, said Vince Jones, the county’s director of emergency management.

“We have that address so if there was an emergency call, we know we need four to five firefighters to take (that person) out,” Jones said.

Jones said the office of emergency management contacts people on the list beforehand and asks, “Do you need a place to go, or do you need us to help them get out of here?’”

During the blizzard of 2022, on Jan. 29, town emergency managers asked for the list to check on seniors living year-round in their communities.

“The biggest thing for seniors is, if they can’t register themselves, to reach the police department,” said Robert Burnaford, chief of police for Harvey Cedars. “Always have medication information updates and points of contact listed. Let them know if they’re on oxygen.”

Burnaford was lauded as a hero for rescues during Sandy, as an off-duty police officer, along with then-mayor Johnathan Oldman. They rescued three families just as the eye of the storm passed through the area, when the ocean breached the dunes.

Harvey Cedars lies in a census tract, which it shares with Long Beach Township north of Ship Bottom and Barnegat Light, with an estimated 6.5% of its residents are 85 years or older, according to the 2020 data.

“A part of the Register Ready asks if they are wheelchair bound or have physical limitations, to let them know. A lot of them have elevators,” Burnaford said.

As sea levels continue to rise, and as storms intensify, seniors’ emergency plans will be used more and more often. It is a risk of living near the shore. But for some seniors, it is a risk they are willing to take.

Greenberg said that after Sandy, he found many seniors whose homes were damaged declared they would stay and rebuild.

He recalled them saying, “I’m an old person. I love the place. I want to live here. I’m gonna die here. I’ll will whatever the property’s worth to my children and they can do whatever they want with it.”

Alanna Elder, of Climate Central, contributed data to this story.