Crews manning trucks and heavy equipment from the Matawan Public Works Department have been moving throughout the borough, looking for local roads where trees or tree limbs remain an impediment to traffic.
"Downed trees blocking roads," said field tech Guy Policari, describing the department's primary mission on Tuesday. "Our main concern is getting the roads cleared."
Policari was part of a crew working Tina Place in the Freneau section of the borough, where Sandy's high winds had fully uprooted several large trees in this neighborood of Victorian-style homes.
Frank Reinhold drove a frontloader, pushing fallen trees to curbside, where Adam Castanada begin cutting them up with a chainsaw.
Joe Triolo and Eddie Ramirez arrived with a dump truck, ready to carry the debris from the scene.
The field techs have had a firsthand look at the storm damage throughout the borough and compared it to the severe snowstorms of the mid-1980s and Hurricane Irene last year.
"This is the worse by far," said Triolo. "It even overtakes those snowstorms in '86. And this was way more devastating than Irene."
