Casino Pier Owner Discusses Impact of Sandy; Future of Amusement PierSEASIDE HEIGHTS—Three weeks after Superstorm Sandy pounded through the shoreline, boardwalk and amusement areas, here, Vincent Storino, managing member of Casino Beach Pier, LLC, took a helicopter flight to view the full scope of the damage to the Casino Pier.
Since the morning after the storm made landfall here, on October 30th, images of the Jet Star rollercoaster ride partly submerged in the surf beside the shattered end of the pier became one of the main icons of Sandy’s wrath as area residents without power but with battery-powered cellular smartphones and national and international news organizations all flocked to the online social media website Facebook for on the ground information as the area began to first assess the crushing blow the combination storm system wrought.
This was how the pier manager first learned of the horror waiting for him at his family’s amusement pier.
“Where I was, we had no power, so initially I learned about the damage through my cellphone—people were just sending me messages,” he said.
A week earlier, upon seeing the European weather model for Hurricane Sandy’s path, the pier manager got nervous.
“Then when they were saying that storm was going to make a left-hand turn, that scared me because a storm has never come straight in from the east like this one did,” he said. “I knew it was going to push a tremendous amount of water to us.”
Mr. Storino said that his family prepared for the storm both at their Casino Pier and Jenkinson’s Beach Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach the same way they would any other storm.
“Rides that we were able to get off of the pier were brought to our warehouse in Toms River,” he said. “Some rides were stored in the Centrifuge [ride, located on the eastern portion of the pier].”
Late in the evening of October 29th, Sandy made landfall and caused damage to homes and infrastructure ranging into the billions of dollars in the state alone, according to the National Weather Service’s preliminary estimate. That agency also reported several wind gusts in Ocean County at close to 90 mph, and a buoy located near the entrance to New York Harbor issued a record wave height of 32.5 feet at 8:50 pm, just before a time that multiple witnesses present on the barrier island at that time attribute to a fast moving storm surge that elevated water levels in or near their homes drastically in a short period.
With much of the New Jersey shore without power or communications capabilities, the extent of the damage was unclear until the break of day, when Mr. Storino learned the news via the images being transmitted online through his smartphone by those who remained on the island through the night.
It wasn’t until October 31st, when President Barack Obama and Governor Chris Christie were flying in Marine One, that Mr. Storino was first able to make it back to his family’s amusement center.
“The whole upper section of the pier is going to need to come down—in fact, part of what’s there is starting to collapse and will probably fall in soon,” he reported. “The ocean and the waves have been relentless since the storm.”
“The aerial pictures do not describe the damage that it did—everyone shows the rollercoaster in the ocean, and the rollercoaster in the ocean is minimal to the damage sustained to the pier,” the pier manager continued. “Did it fall off the pier or is it still resting on the pier below the water? I don’t know. To me the position it’s sitting in right now, it shifted northwest, so it’s kind of inland and a bit north of the pier.”
“The status of the carousel is unknown,” he continued, referring to the over 100-year-old Dr. Floyd Moreland Historic Dentzel/Looff Carousel with music provided by the only continuously operating Wurlitzer Military Band Organ in the state, present in Seaside Heights since 1932. “I’ve been reading things on the internet and getting e-mails saying the carousel is fine. We don’t know that the carousel is fine. We’re doing everything we can to protect it. It did get some water from underneath, there was some wind-driven rain inside from the top, however, [the carousel] is made out of wood. There’s no power, no heat. It’s inside of a building and with the moisture, we don’t know what’s going to happen—we don’t know if it warped or if there are any damages yet.”
“It doesn’t look like any of the rides on the pier are salvageable. It doesn’t look it,” Mr. Storino stated, adding that their storage warehouse in eastern Toms River Township took on “three to four feet of water, so the rides that were in the warehouse were underwater. A couple of the smaller kiddie rides were in the warehouse—some were old, some were new, but nothing is really salvageable.”
One ride that he was particularly interested in trying to save or restore was the Enterprise, a horizontal to vertical moving Ferris wheel with 20 gondolas that utilized centrifugal force to achieve its effect and is named after the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original Star Trek television series of the 1960s. It was manufactured by HUSS Park Attractions in 1972 and came to the Casino Pier from Coney Island, New York in the middle of the last decade.
The famous mock-haunted dark ride located at the end of the pier, the Stillwalk Manor, “is gone. It just disappeared. I found one of the cars from the ride on the beach, washed up near Jenkinson’s in Point Pleasant,” reported Mr. Storino.
“Everybody’s focused on the rollercoaster in the ocean, but there’s so much more damage than that—we still don’t know the full extent, and we’re finding more and more each day,” he continued. “We hope we have the proper insurance; we’re just starting to meet with our insurance company. The outpouring of support is overwhelming; it’s hard to take in. We’re fortunate that all of our family, we’re all safe, we had some damage and we don’t know anyone who perished in the storm. In this area, I’m amazed that there’s not several hundred fatalities.”
The Storino family’s insurance firm for both the Casino Pier and Jenkinson’s Beach Boardwalk is Andrew K. Knox and Company, of Toms River.
Despite the heavy damage inflicted upon Casino Pier, the pier manager had his sights set on the future.
“We’re going to do our best to try and get open as much as we can as soon as we can. There are no preliminary plans; it’s still out of our hands at this time,” he said, thanking both Seaside Heights and Point Pleasant Beach boroughs for their help and support. “The plan is to get something open of some sort in both towns, as much as we can in Point Pleasant Beach, providing the town has to reconstruct the boardwalk. Seaside Heights has already demolished their boardwalk; I’m pretty confident they can get that [rebuilt] in time.”
Before stepping out of the helicopter, he stated, “we want to build bigger and better than before, but that’s up to the insurance company and the professionals. We might be able to open the lower portion of the pier, but right now I just don’t know. It all depends on the extent of the pier. We might have to rebuild the entire pier. It might have to be rebuilt in concrete for seismic ratings.”
“At this point I just don’t have the answers,” he said.
The helicopter flight was arranged for Mr. Storino through Patrick Day of Liberty Helicopters by Chris Aldrich, public insurance adjuster with the Andrew K. Knox and Company. The Storino family’s Point Pleasant Beach amusement center is run by Vincent Storino’s cousin, Anthony Storino.
CREDIT – Phil Stilton, Toms River Magazine & Riverside Signal
