A police tow truck pulls a sedan out of the brook at the end of Hathaway Lane.

Residents of Hathaway Lane were scratching their heads today at the sight of a sedan that landed, nose down, in a ravine at the end of their street. The driver of the car, an 86-year-old Verona resident who apparently was confused about his whereabouts, was unhurt, and his car had only minor damage. A police tow truck pulled the car out of the ravine.

The man, a resident of Valhalla Way, drove to the end of Hathaway, the last street off Park Avenue whose dead-end is formed by a large outcropping of rock, and kept going. He managed to steer his car to the right of the rock, onto the lawn in front of 1 Hathaway Lane, and then slid down into the ravine and a shallow brook. The man may have been under the mistaken impression that he was on Valhalla, which runs parallel to Hathaway and is a through street.

The western end of Verona Park today with oil-absorbing materials

When a tree tipped over in the wee hours of the morning Monday on Park Avenue, it took out a utility pole, knocking out power in the immediate vicinity for a few hours. But it was also responsible for a small oil spill in Verona Lake.

According to an employee for Allstate Power Vac,  the remediation company hired by PSE&G to clean up the oil, about 15 gallons of an oil similar to mineral oil ended up in Verona Lake after the tree knocked the pole over. The oil, which was used as a transformer to cool down the electrical wires in the pole, was washed into the street and then the sewer at the bottom of Hathaway Lane by the heavy rain. The sewer dumps into Verona Lake, just upstream of the small bridge on the westernmost edge of the lake.

By the afternoon, Allstate Power Vac employees had set up a dam of absorbent materials on the downstream side of the bridge, as well as in front of the sewer grate on Park. The Allstate employee said that the material would soak up 85 to 90 percent of the oil, and that the work would be done by the end of the day today.

Construction backups run from Hillcrest Farms to the 7-11

The replacement of the curbs on the south side of Bloomfield Avenue in Verona between Park and Brookdale Avenues has begun. Traffic was moving slowly there today, especially in the direction of Montclair during school drop-off and pick-up hours. The work had ended by 5 p.m., but there were still some police vehicles in the road.  If you need to pass that way over the next few days, keep alert, stay off your cell phone and consider an alternate route if possible.