Town assesses damage from June 23 storm
Page 4 • Wednesday, July 8, 2015 • The Hammonton Gazette
TOWN, from Page 1
the Joint PDa team arriving Wednesday and
thursday July 8th and 9th,” Conover’s email
said.
feMa funding would help offset the cost
of the cleanup, the mayor told The Gazette.
“the state has to make that disaster declaration in the three counties, so we can have
some feMa dollars. it will offset our costs
for cleanup and repairs. there are different
criteria. We feel we could receive somewhere
in the $800,000 range,” DiDonato said.
the mayor said the town would be moving
forward with cleanup during the next two
weeks and until the end of the month.
“right now we are making a major push
on cleaning up the limbs that are piled on the
curbside. We think we will have the lion’s
share of it up within the next two weeks. We
think it will take until the end of July,” DiDonato said.
on July 1, DiDonato, several members of
town council, Hammonton Public Works
Department Head, Scott rivera, and Public
Works Manager/business administrator
Jerome barberio were part of a special meeting at town hall’s third floor meeting room to
discuss storm-related cleanup and assessment
of damage from a severe thunderstorm that
produced wind damage on June 23.
Citing conversations barberio had with atlantic County office of emergency Management Deputy Coordinator, ed Conover, he
said there is an estimated $900,000 worth of
damage due to the storm in the Hammonton
area.
“that includes the school’s damage, at the parks from what we have
seen, large tree removals, and Scott
[rivera] and i are still working to get
quotes for that, and brush removal,
which is not necessarily a guess but
an educated guess. We have about
$200,000 to $250,000 of raw labor
and rental and equipment costs. that
is not feMa reimbursement money.
that is $250,000 we are going to
have to shell out between now and
when we finish in order to get this
operation done. We pray to God to
get some of that money back. it
doesn’t include removing some large
trees that we can’t get to that we
don’t have the equipment for. it
doesn’t include fixing the sidewalks
and the curb damage that we have
seen and the parks with the fence
damage and all of the trees with the
parks. i counted 18 trees at boyer
avenue. We are i