By MARTIN DeANGELIS Press of AC Staff Writer | Posted: Sunday, February 14, 2010 |

Mark Smith, 51, of Pipe Creek, Del., stands by his Third Avenue home Saturday in Wildwood. Smith called off a skiing vacation to check on the home.

Mark Smith had a family ski trip planned to upstate New York for Presidents Day weekend, but when neighbors of his North Wildwood beach house warned him that the recent run of snowstorms left his street with no electricity for most of last week, Smith knew he had to pick the shore over the mountains.

“I said, ‘It’s been seven days. I’m too nervous — I have to go check,’” said Smith, 51, who made the two-hour drive Saturday morning with his wife, Eileen, from their home in Pine Creek, Del., near Newark.

And even though he came expecting bad news — water pipes frozen, broken and mangling the rest of the 100-year-old house — about the worst thing he found was a chill inside and too much snow outside to let him pull his pickup truck all the way off Third Avenue.

The Smiths were hardly the only people to make that long, snowy drive to their shore houses Saturday. In some beach towns, there were actually more out-of-state cars on the streets than New Jersey vehicles. By the middle of Saturday afternoon in Avalon, one block of Ocean Drive had seven cars and trucks with Pennsylvania license plates — and not one with New Jersey plates.

The magnet for most of those people was media reports or word from neighbors that Cape May County was hit hard by last weekend’s snowstorm, and the one that followed it Wednesday. At its height last Saturday, tens of thousands of Atlantic City Electric customers were without power, and sections of the Wildwoods had no elecricity for most of the week.

By Saturday evening, the company reported that just about 50 customers in the Wildwoods were still without power, and there were scattered, small outages across Cape May County and the Hammonton area — all fewer than five customers.

Bill Davenport, Wildwood’s emergency-management coordinator, said that despite a lack of electricity knocking out heat in many homes, he has not heard much about pipes bursting. For that, he thanked overnight-low temperatures that stayed relatively mild for much of last week — at least until late in the week, when most people had their electricity and heat back.

Robin and Dennis Enoch did not need to take a long drive to see snow — they had plenty of it at their main home in Cherry Hill, Camden County. A combined 41 inches of snow kept them from Wildwood until Saturday to check on the condo they like to visit all year, even though Robin, 58, was frantic to get there after she heard the power was out.

“We had to come down, and we were just praying all the way down,” she said, sitting in the Key West Cafe on Pacific Avenue, around the corner from their condo — which also turned out to be just chilly, and not damaged.

The Enochs and their Wildwood buddy, Ready Juliff, of Warminster, Pa., were happy to see their favorite neighborhood restaurant back in business after being closed by the power failure for most of the week. But Key West Cafe owners Steve and Jackie Mikulski said they did not escape unharmed. Steve estimates they had to throw out $3,700 worth of spoiled food.

Still, they managed to keep their sense of humor. Jackie Mikulski laughed as she told the story of another Wildwood neighbor laughing at the Mikulskis when he saw them moving into Wildwood two years ago — and unpacking a snowblower they brought down from their old place in Burlington County.

“He said, ‘You’ll never need that here,’” she said — just a little while before the guy was asking to borrow the snowblower, which Steve Mikulski has since used several times to clear out sidewalks around their block of Pacific Avenue.

One island away, in Stone Harbor, Jamie Diller, of Diller-Fisher Realtors, noticed plenty of cars heading into town Saturday morning as he went to work, more than normal even for a long holiday weekend that usually draws some visitors to the shore.

He knows lots of those people were checking on their homes because so many of them had been calling his office all week to ask about houses. And people who could not visit were still calling Saturday. Just that morning, saleswoman Patti DiMarco heard from five customers as far away as Florida, New Hampshire and western Pennsylvania, asking if their houses were safe.

And because the office had no electricity for much of last week, the agents knew they were not getting lots of e-mails and voice mails from frantic owners. But, Diller said, he does not think some people understand from a distance how bad the storm actually was up close.

“We’ll do our best to get to your house and help you,” he said, “but we’re not even dug out ourselves yet.”

Diller said the storm also hurt business because he cannot let potential customers go check out houses they are interested in renting or buying — there’s so much snow, it’s not safe, he said.

But Casey Nuyannes still drove down from Aston, Pa., to scout out potential rental houses for next summer around Wildwood Crest. And thanks to a tip from his helpful real estate agent, he came packing some gear he does not usually need when he heads to the beach.

“She said, ‘If you’re coming down,’” Nuyannes said, “‘You better bring a snow shovel.’”