BRIELLE — The collapse of the dome on top of this shore town's water storage tank on Friday had very little impact on residents, officials said.

Although it initially was described as a "catastrophic event" on the Borough's Facebook page, Mayor Thomas B. Nicol said that was before public works employees could get a good look at what exactly happened at the top of the 155,000-gallon tower on Old Bridge Road.

It was too windy for workers to climb the 150-foot high tower or to send a drone to get a close look, according to Nicol.

Two homes close to the tower were evacuated  as a precaution.

"There never was a problem with potable water and there was a minor problem with pressure" mostly for residents in higher elevations of the southern Monmouth County town, Nicol said.

Residents may have experienced low pressure for up to 2 hours, according to Nicol, who said he took a hot shower on Saturday morning with normal pressure.

"For some reason the domed top was sucked in by some vacuum mechanism that we don't really know how it happened. The dome didn't come off. The weld held. It's just like a can was crushed," Nicol said. "It had to be a severe vacuum" the mayor said, adding that the dome is made of quarter-inch steel.

Brielle's public works department is responsible for the borough's water supply and Nicol credited the redundancies built into system for lessening the impact.

"We are part of the Manasquan River Reservoir system and get water from that reservoir as well," Nicol said. "We've made the determination that we can run the system indefinitely this way until we repair the top of the tower."

Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com.

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