Tropical Storm Doria, Part One

Tropical Storm Doria, August 1971.

Part One:

“’I’ve lived here all my life, more than 50 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mayor Anthony Cattano surveying the flood-ravaged areas of town.

“Cattano took a personal role in relief operations which expanded from the police and fire departments to civil defense and the National Guard after the Whippany River began rising rapidly around 3 o’clock Saturday morning.

“All low-lying areas in the town, and some in Morris Township, were under as much as six feet of water, and while the Pine Street, Atno Avenue, Mills Street, Washington Street, Madison Avenue and Western Avenue areas sustained still-to-be-tabulated property damage from the flooding, hardest hit was the town’s black [sic] community, the Hollow.

“Around 8 am Saturday, emergency workers evacuated 32 people from Coal Avenue and Center Street, roads hidden between Spring Street and Goldere’s Junkyard on the Whippany River.

“As water began rising in the Whippany, normally nothing more than a placid open trough, families gathered on front porches, laughing and joking with each other, to keep their ‘spirits up,’ as Mrs. Lulu Acklin, 5 Coal Ave., explained.

“When the evacuation order came, the families were avoiding a broken gas main more than the flood waters, one woman resident reported.

“Mrs. Gladys D. Taylor, agreed the

waters failed to worry her.

“Up at 2 am, she said she went to the cellar. ‘There was no water there, and I remembered they said ‘don’t worry if there’s no water in the cellar,’ she said.

“’Then I went to the kitchen door, opened it and watched the water flooding in.”

“The Whippany burst its banks, wrecked the Cauldwell Playground off Martin Luther King Avenue and at one point spread from George Street to the rear of the A&P Supermarket on Morris Street.”

~Daily Record, August 30, 1971

Photos: Wikipedia

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