UPPER TOWNSHIP — Earl Tarvis stepped out from his home Tuesday morning in time to see the dark funnel cloud tear the roof from his neighbor’s home before it crossed Stagecoach Road and dissolved in the distance.
The roar of the tornado, spun from Tropical Storm Isaias as it reached Cape May County early that morning, and the smashing of one of his windows led Tarvis to investigate.
“I never heard anything that loud before, and I was in a Marine rifle company in Vietnam. In combat,” he said.
Tarvis is a longtime resident of the Pine Hill Mobile Home Park off Route 9 in Marmora, which saw some of the worst of the damage from the tornado. It’s called a mobile home park, but the houses are set on cinder blocks and are not designed to be moved. Many live in the 55-and-older community year-round, while others use their manufactured houses as summer homes.
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On Wednesday, three properties in the community had red stickers on the doors, marked as unfit for habitation without major repairs.
According to neighbors and township officials, no one was injured in the storm, but the property damage was extensive. Neighbors said firefighters helped one resident out of her home, saying she had mobility issues.
Residents of two of the properties are staying with family members, said Mayor Rich Palombo, while one woman is being put up in an Ocean City hotel for the time being. It was the best available option, Palombo said.
“Putting a shelter together with COVID-19 was not going to be easy,” he said. The hotel was a better temporary solution.
After the tornado slammed homes and businesses, the high winds from Isaias continued throughout the day, downing trees, damaging properties and causing other problems.
On Wednesday, Palombo said, a significant number of residents in the Marmora and Beesleys Point areas remained without power as temperatures climbed through the day, even as utility crews continued working to clear trees and repair lines.
For some residents, he said, “It could be a couple more days before we get the power back on.”
Palombo plans to declare a state of emergency for the township, in part in hopes of getting help funding the cleanup and repair costs. He said he had heard from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker and state Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, and state Assemblymen Antwan McClellan and Erik Simonsen were set to visit the community to see some of the damage late Wednesday.
While much of the region felt punishing winds from the tropical storm for much of the day, the tornado did by far the most concentrated damage.
A report from the Marmora Volunteer Fire Company states the twister began as a waterspout and traveled onto land, becoming a tornado. Video posted to social media shows a gray funnel cloud moving between Strathmere and Ocean City and out to the marsh. A swath of downed cedar trees that once lined Ocean Drive between the towns marks where the path crossed from the water to the marsh.
From there, it’s easy to trace the winding path of destruction from where the tornado crossed the Garden State Parkway about 9:55 a.m., ripping the tops from oak trees between the lanes, and entered Marmora. The swirling winds toppled more than 100 trees and scattered headstones at Seaside Cemetery, ripped the roof off buildings at Axis Self Storage and damaged a Coca-Cola distribution center on Route 9.
“I just saw stuff flying in the air. It was on top of us,” said Mike Hoskavich, who was at his job at Smart Pools on Route 9 when a tornado warning came over his phone. He described a dark, funnel-shaped cloud moving quickly and an enormous roar.
“It sounded like a 747 coming in on us. It sounded like a big airplane,” he said the next day. “And it was going fast. It was huge.”
While he watched from the doorway of the pool business, which escaped major damage, the tornado crossed the road a little north of where he stood, uprooting a huge tree and smashing it into the Glory Road Memorials business, demolishing the side of the building and crushing a Honda Odyssey. The storm also snapped utility poles and downed multiple lines before skirting the edge of a car wash and the Oak Ridge Resort and moving toward the Pine Hill development.
Both Oak Ridge, which has trailer sites, and the car wash saw damage from the storm. One visitor to the campground said they were lucky it did not see a direct hit from the twister.
At Pine Hill, Tarvis said it took about 15 seconds for the funnel cloud to pass. His property, across a narrow road from the worst damage, received a broken window and damage to the aluminum skirting around the bottom of the house.
According to Scott Morgan, Upper Township’s emergency management coordinator, the tornado lasted a matter of minutes, which was enough time to wreak extensive damage. After passing Pine Hill, the storm damaged a property on Stagecoach Road and dissipated above the woods soon after.
Morgan did not have an estimate of the total cost of the damage from the storm. The Marmora Volunteer Fire Company, the Upper Township Division of EMS, The Tuckahoe Volunteer Fire Company, Seaville Fire and Rescue, the Ocean City Fire Department, State Police, the township Public Works Department and the Cape May County Regional Urban Search and Rescue Team participated in the storm response.
According to Morgan, crews freed a woman whose car was covered in fallen wires. She had called emergency services instead of getting out of the car, because she did not know whether there was still power in the lines.
“She did the right thing,” he said.
