Hurricane Sandy
parkworld-online.com
Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, took a severe beating
Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, devastated portions of the
Northeastern United States in late October. Estimates put the full impact of the damage at close to $80 billion (€61bn).
Several amusement facilities were hit especially hard. Half-submerged off Seaside Heights, the Star Jet rollercoaster at Casino Pier has become an iconic symbol of the storm’s destruction: a tombstone at sea. Other parks escaped with less damage. In this Big Question special, Park World asked 10 operators in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut: “How was your park affected by Hurricane Sandy?” Their responses appear here in order based on their facility’s location, from south to north.
Jack Morey, Morey’s Piers, Wildwood, New Jersey: We suffered minimal damage; we are very, very lucky. We will not know for sure the effect on our business until summer, but do hope that all the national and international media will give us an opportunity to rebrand the unique attributes of
Wildwood and the Jersey Shore.
Scott Simpson, Playland’s Castaway Cove, Ocean City, New Jersey: The centre of the eye passed about six miles north. Ocean City did not receive the brunt of the storm but hundreds of properties in town were flooded and are no longer liveable. At the park, we lost a couple of signs on
top of the Double Shot and the centre canvas on the swing ride, which is a necessity to protect the motors or we would have removed it. I had our crew remove all low lying motors, lights, transformers, computer systems and gearboxes that we knew could experience flooding. The only areas that did have flooding were around our two rollercoasters. We had 15 men working for two weeks to clean the park. We fabricated a plywood wall around the coaster fences which kept the majority of sand out. Our homes that house seasonal employees had two feet of water.
The ocean pushed back the sand under the boardwalk and also under our arcade buildings and miniature golf courses. What used to be six feet from the boardwalk down to the beach is now just one-and- half-feet. We were scheduled for beach replenishment this spring and hopefully the project will be expanded to replace all the dunes that were destroyed. The effect on our business will not be known until we get ito our season next year. We were fortunate that we had already disassembled and stored all of the equipment for the winter when the storm hit. Knowing many of the people from the New Jersey Amusement Association that were on the wrong side of the storm I consider myself very lucky. Knowing full well the enormity of the work ahead for them and realising that could have also included our city makes me feel very fortunate and feel terrible for what they are facing going forward.
Jay Gillian, Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, Ocean City, New Jersey: The impact of Hurricane Sandy to our pier was quite minimal in comparison to neighbouring towns. We had some structural damage to our main building which houses 10 children’s rides. Part of the roof
blew off along with damage to our main doors along the boardwalk. We had a lot of debris strewn throughout the park and under the pier. Thankfully, we didn’t have any damage to our rides. We were left with a lot of clean-up, something we couldn’t be more relieved about.
Anthony Catanoso, Steel Pier, Atlantic City, New Jersey: As you can see from the photos I took from our helicopter two days after Sandy, the Steel Pier
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Steel Pier in Atlantic City escaped relatively unscathed, yet its operators the Catanoso family suffered losses elsewhere in New Jersey
DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013
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