“Lucky”
“His jobs package is a hurricane. I guess he prayed a lot and got lucky that a storm came …”
– Senate President Stephen Sweeney
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Sweeney's definition of “lucky”:
· 346,000 homes and housing units damaged or destroyed;
· Over 2.7 million households and businesses without power, as well as over 1000 schools;
· Over 116,000 people under mandatory evacuation order and displaced at the height of the storm;
o At the height of the sheltering effort, there were 127 shelters open, with an estimated 7,005 residents;
· Nearly 250,000 New Jerseyans registered for assistance with FEMA;
o Over 41,000 are currently receiving temporary housing assistance;
· Nearly 600 full or partial road closures;
· Regional mass transit operations and infrastructure hard hit, causing system-wide disruptions of NJ Transit and PATH service, including impacts to Hudson River crossings affecting over 860,000 average daily public transit passengers;
· All New Jersey schools closed for two days, hundreds more remained closed beyond that;
o 6 schools completely destroyed, an additional 45 sustained varying degrees of damage;
· 189,500 businesses impacted;
· 75 percent of small businesses in New Jersey affected;
o 19,000 small businesses sustained $250,000 in damages or more;
· 6.4 million cubic meters of debris to be removed;
o 4,425 truckloads of debris had to be removed from state and local roads;
o 4,330 dump truck loads of sand already provided to municipalities to recycle and replenish their beaches;
· 100,000 storm-related unemployment claims filed.
The widespread damage caused to personal property, businesses, transportation and utilities infrastructure, the impact on the state’s tourism industry, mitigation and prevention costs has been assessed at $36.9 billion.
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