IRVINGTON, NJ — When Tropical Storm Ida hit New Jersey, it caused massive flooding in many areas, and Irvington was hit worse than most. Weeks afterward, the Irvington post office on Springfield Avenue is still closed. This has forced residents to visit nearby post offices to take care of their postal needs.
Irvington Mayor Tony Vauss acknowledged the circumstances surrounding the temporary closure of the post office but said he doesn’t know when it will be cleared to open.
“There was a lot of damage. The same brook that runs alongside my house and a lot of people’s houses runs alongside the post office, so they were hit pretty hard,” Vauss said on Sunday, Sept. 26. “That’s how my house and all of my neighbors’ were all flooded out.…
“I don’t know the specific damages,” he continued. “But the place was flooded out and a lot of the equipment that they use to sort mail, distribute mail and a lot of that stuff was damaged. It’s hard to say how extensive the flooding was. I know in front of my house, it was over 6 feet. So that runs along the same line. In order to get into the post office, you have to go over the bridge of the brook, so there’s no telling how much water they took on.
“They’re assessing the damage, and they’ll let us know as soon as they get things back on track,” added the mayor. “But as of right now, there is no time of reopening.”
As an alternative, residents can use the Vailsburg post office at 210 Stuyvesant Ave. and the Newark post office at 290 Springfield Ave. Other post offices in the surrounding area, including Maplewood’s at 195 Maplewood Ave., are offering their services to residents until Irvington’s post office at 1086 Springfield Ave. is up and running.
United States Postal Service communications specialist Xavier Hernandez addressed the Irvington issues on Monday, Sept. 27.
“As a result of the storm coming through, we did have some damage to some critical operational things at the post office,” Hernandez said. “Things that won’t allow us to basically offload and sort through mail items at the post office. Unfortunately, one of those things is needing a complete replacement, and that’s what’s added to a little bit of our time frame. We were trying to repair a piece to an important gate that we have, and, instead, it needs to be completely replaced.”
Hernandez explained that the gate is an important component that needs to function before the post office can open back up for business.
“It’s called a lift gate,” he said. “Essentially, it’s for our trucks to be able to back up and offload items and load up items. If we don’t have the ability to open up there and offload and onload, we can’t run any operations from that facility.
“But it does look like that replacement is going to be in sometime this week, in which case, we’re expecting to have the office back up and running by either late this week or early next week,” added Hernandez.
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