In Cape May County, Emergency Management Director Frank McCall gave a chilling deadpan admonishment to Cape May residents and vacationers wanting to stay behind to ride out the storm.

He asked them to put a 3-by-5 index card in their left shoe with their Social Security number, next of kin and telephone number of next of kin, “so we know how to identify you.” He did not seem to be joking.

NJ State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said troopers began working with county and local emergency management offices when they woke up Thursday morning to find the storm heading up from the Bahamas had “wobbled westward.”

“That was not a good sign for us because it looks like the eye is going to pass very close to, if not over, Cape May, which means that the barrier islands that are concentrated in Atlantic County and in Cape May County are going to be subject to some very high winds,” Fuentes said during a news conference with Christie Thursday in Ewing.

“They are going to be subject to a storm surge which may run as much as 12 feet as a result of the coincidence of astronomical tides on Saturday night and Sunday morning. And so we’re engaged in somewhat extraordinary discussions beyond the normal discussions that we’ve had over the last few days about the nature of evacuations.”

By the time Hurricane Irene has passed, which could be Sunday evening, it may make Tuesday’s earthquake feel like a sneeze.

Jersey weather authority David Robinson said Irene had all the makings of the “most devastating storm to ever hit the state.”

“I don’t want to invoke panic, but anyone who doesn’t treat this with the utmost respect could put themselves in danger,” said Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University.

In a worst-case scenario, the storm could bring the record-breaking rains of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the statewide 70-mph wind gusts of the March 2010 nor’easter and the coastal destruction of the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944.

“No one is saying they’ll all come into fruition,” he said. “But you have to understand, we are very vulnerable.”

National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said that although plenty of uncertainty still exists regarding the intensity and track of Irene, there was little doubt that havoc was in store just from the sheer amount of rain even if the storm weakened before hitting the state.

(Source: NJ Star Ledger)