JEFF GRANIT staff Above, firefighters and rescue workers from Helmetta and the surrounding towns use equipment including a motor boat to address massive flooding on Railroad Avenue. Staff Writer

It was no ark, but the canoe Karen Steeber was using to float her pets to safety was enough to save the animals, and some food and clothing, from a flooded Railroad Avenue in Helmetta.

“The firemen said to grab stuff for a couple days, just in case,” said Steeber, one of several borough residents who was flooded out of her home on the morning of Sept. 29 by the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne.

JEFF GRANIT staff Kort Steeber, 15, rows a canoe along a flooded Railroad Avenue in Helmetta Sept. 28. Heavy rain from the previous night created disastrous conditions in the borough. Steeber’s brother, South Brunswick resident Mark Olsen, was not quite sure how to react when she informed him she needed some kind of watercraft to get things out of her house.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ ” Olsen recalled.

Officials were still trying to answer that same question, but no definitive explanation was immediately available.

“Why it flooded the way it flooded ... we’re trying to figure that out,” Helmetta Councilman Vincent Asciolla said last week.

Residents and officials noted that the area appeared fine earlier in the morning. By 8 a.m., though, massive flooding had arrived.

There were several theories regarding the cause of the flood. Ken Steeber, Karen’s husband, had one of them.

“Manalapan Brook, or whatever it is right over here, comes out of Thompson Park, and they opened up the floodgates in Thompson Park, so this is all flooded. Plus, you got the swamp and the old Cranbury bogs in the back over here that are all flooded,” Ken said.

Other residents and workers on the scene last week spoke of the possibility that a sewer problem was the cause.

Regardless, Theresa Macewicz, who lives next door to the Steebers, knew exactly what to salvage when she arrived home to find the water elevated up to her house and her basement flooded.

“All I grabbed was my medication and my dog,” she said.

Macewicz said the water had not been high enough to prevent her from going to work as a school bus driver earlier yesterday morning, but by the time she got home her neighborhood was flooded.

“When I left for work, it wasn’t that bad yet, but the water was rising up to my driveway. I took a chance and went to work, and when I came back the street was all closed,” Macewicz said.

After taking what she needed from the house, Macewicz went to check her basement, which was almost completely underwater.

“I lost everything downstairs, and the water was gushing through the windows. The firemen came and told me to evacuate because they were afraid that the foundation was going to collapse.”

Because of the way the houses on Railroad Avenue were constructed, none of the foundations had collapsed, though it was certainly a concern.

“The foundation of these houses isn’t like a normal foundation,” Karen Steeber said. “It only goes down about 4 feet. My husband said the water ate away at the dirt underneath, and it was swirling in some spots.”

While many firefighters were busy pumping the water across the railroad tracks onto Main Street, John Emery, a firefighter with East Brunswick Fire Department District 1, noted that other fire officials were searching for possible fire hazards that the flooding might have caused.

“We’re more or less checking all the houses to make sure the basements aren’t full of water, and that their water heaters and their electrical boxes are above the waterline, because if they are under the waterline, then it’s a hazard,” Emery said.

East Brunswick District 2 firefighter Brian Adams said that in most cases danger had been averted.

“Some people have full basements, [but] most have crawl spaces, so there’s not really too much to worry about, because the people that have crawls spaces, most of their utilities are in the top part of the house and not the basement, so it makes it a little safer for them,” Adams said.

Emery said the fire departments were assisting any residents who wanted to evacuate.

“We’re offering them [help] if they want to evacuate. I don’t think it’s a mandatory evacuation, but we’re offering. But most of the people are making out pretty good. As you can see, we’re just pumping the water out of the street [to] where it’s draining off,” Emery said.

Helmetta Councilman Andrew Tancredi said the draining process had hit a snag around 11:30 a.m. last Wednesday, but that the engineers were working to correct it.

“Right now, they’ve got to get rid of the water, and there’s a drain problem,” said Tancredi, who added that as soon as more of the water was drained the pumps could be fixed, and the process would be sped up considerably.

Tina Conober, a resident of Spotswood, came to Helmetta to see the disaster for herself.

“It was a shock to see all this water,” she said.

Resident Greg Slavicek said the flooding escalated faster than anybody anticipated.

“It wasn’t here at 6 a.m., and an hour and a half later it was totally flooded,” Slavicek said.

Main Street resident Joseph Slezak said that all the effort was barely enough to contain the water.

“What can you do? They have been pumping and the water’s not going down, it seems like it keeps rising,” Slezak said.

Another resident watching the drainage efforts said this was the first flood in town since 1994.

“But I think this is worse than that. They say as fast as they’re pumping is as fast as it’s coming in,” she said.

Emery said that some of the residents could be back in their homes by last Wednesday night, but that it might take much longer. Either way, Emery said, the borough itself is facing a much longer road to recovery.

“The town’s going to have to shut down. I think the biggest inconvenience for people, not the residents, but other people, [will be] trying to get through town to Spotswood and Jamesburg. It’s just not happening.”

East Brunswick District 2 firefighter Rich Jewett said Helmetta was not the only town to experience major road closures due to flooding. A stretch of Route 18 north in East Brunswick was closed last Wednesday night.

“Between Cranbury Road and Milltown Road, they had it shut down,” he said.

Monroe Township Detective Sgt. Lawrence Linke said last Wednesday that the landscape of that town had changed, literally, overnight.

“When I get up this morning, I hear that Mounts Mills Road was closed, or at least barely passable; Englishtown Road was closed; Route 33 was closed,” Linke said, adding that the Monroe section of Route 33 becomes a problem area when it rains, though nobody was prepared for this.

“There’s one area that’s real low, and every other year, probably, we close it when it rains real hard. But that just created a nightmare out there. It was ugly,” Linke said.

Railroad Avenue residents Sharon and Alfredo Rosario also went to bed Tuesday night thinking that the driving rains and punishing winds would disappear during the night and leave little more than wet roads and puddles, only to discover that their house would be an island by midmorning. The worst part, Sharon said, was actually believing that the worst of the storm had passed.

“We thought it was over,” she said.