HIGHLANDS – Two homes in this Hurricane Sandy-ravaged borough will have to be demolished after one house slid off its foundation and into another.
A two-story home at 1 Locust Street was being raised off its foundation for flood protection Friday morning, when it slid into an adjacent house at 3 Locust Street Dale Leubner, spokesman for the borough engineering office, said.
“I was notified around 11 a.m. that a house had shifted on its foundation and had gone into a second house,” Leubner said. “All these houses will be coming down today. It’s too precarious to keep it where it is, looking at it, evaluating it, it becomes more of a health and safety issue than anything else.”
Leubner said both homes were unoccupied at the time.
“There’s nobody inside the house, the owner is out of the area right now, “ Leubner said. “The house next to it that it hit is also abandoned.”
Though 3 Locust Street was abandoned, the other home still had possessions inside it.
“Their belongings were still inside, but house is coming down with the belongings,” Leubner said, “It is too unsafe and unstable to allow anyone inside to get the belongings, I know the owner, I feel really bad for him and his family. It is too unsafe to have anyone walk around, I can’t say what would happen.”
The houses are in an area hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.
“This area received a lot of water,” Leubner said. “The marina took a large hit, the restaurant was taken down, we had buildings lost, these buildings took a lot of damage, they took 5 or 6 feet of water at least.”
Mike Kennedy was working on a nearby home on King Street when the accident occurred.
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“I heard a loud noise, like a ‘boom,’ and I thought ‘that’s not good,’” Kennedy said. “I thought it was an explosion at first..”
Crews from Highlands Fire Department, New Jersey Natural Gas and Asbury Park’s building collapse team responded to the accident. At 1:30 p.m., they were disconnecting the houses from utilities in anticipation of the demolition.
Leubner said that around a dozen Highlands homes have been raised so far with few issues.
“There are still a number that have been approved to be listed, but basically we haven’t had any issues,” Leubner said. “This is our first and hopefully our last, and it’s unfortunate.“
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