Firefighters and other rescue personnel on the scene of a fire at Rumson Road and Buena Vista Place in Rumson last night.
Wow, who needs reporters when there’s blogging Mayor Mike Halfacre?
In a post on his site today, Halfacre gives the rundown on a busy night for his town’s police, fire and rescue squads. They had a hand in dealing yet more power outages (for the third day in a row) as well as a house fire in Rumson and a possible DWI in which a two people were nearly hit by a car.
The post is headlined “Oh, What a Night,” and begins:
Last night at about 8:00 p.m. the Fair Haven Fire Department, First Aid and Fire Police responded to a mutual aid request from Rumson due to a house fire in that town. Immediately after clearing from that fire at approximately 9:40 p.m., another call came in, for a fire on a telephone pole at the corner of Hance and River Road. The electric wires had separated, causing the power outage that most of town suffered from.
More (all of it, actually):
JCP&L crews arrived relatively quickly, and were able to get most of the town east of Hance Road, and parts of Rumson that were affected back up within a little more than an hour. The portion of town west of Hance, including I believe, portions of Red Bank, was out for longer, until approximately 2:00 a.m. At our request, JCP&L left a crew in town for the rest of the night.
While River Road was closed, a motor vehicle coming east from Red Bank ignored two separate road detours, almost hitting a JCP&L worker and clipping a Fire Police officer with a mirror. The car was chased by police, and eventually went off the road crashing into a yard near the intersection of Lewis Lane and Lewis Point Road.
Fortunately, no one appears to have been hurt. The driver of the vehicle, which was gold Cadillac-type registered in New York (figures, right?) complained of chest pains and was taken to Riverview. He was suspected of being intoxicated, and the investigation continues. (Remember, innocent until proven guilty)
While that was going on, at least two other calls for assistance or involvement were responded to by the Police Department.
All in all, most of our resources were taken up during the few hours these events were taking place. Fair Haven again sends its thanks to our Volunteer Fire Company, the Fire Police and First Aid. Also, thanks to the Police Departments of Red Bank and Rumson for assisting our PD while our resources were extended in response to the events of last night.
On another note, our sense of urgency and anger in dealing with the continuous power outages continues to rise. We will continue to press our cause with the electric company, as well as the appropriate State and even Federal authorities. Our Borough Attorney is also researching other avenues of relief.
