[Jennifer Valerio]

This storm was scary, boring, and I was a bit worried. I live in Long Island. I can honestly say I just got internet in my house about 20 mins ago for the first time in about five days. In my house everyone but my boyfriend’s mom did not take this storm seriously. I was concern with school work and everyone else was concern with work. Until I actually got my noise out of the books and saw the TV screen that the storm is coming directly towards us. This was on Saturday.

Six Months Back…

If I quickly take you six months back, my boyfriend got obsessed with this show called “Doomsday Preppers”. He and his brothers are Eagle Scouts and they did have an idea on what they would need to prepare for “doomsday” and so they did. Anyway, so for the past 6 months we’ve actually been prepared. So when Sandy came we had everything labeled and stored in our basement, tons of flashlights, batteries, water bobs, oil and water cans, we also had police scanners for our area, we even started to make ready dinners we just deep freeze them. I mean you name it we had it. We had enough supplies for five people, three dogs and three cats for about seven days lol. Then fast forwarded to the next three months, we called in for wood for fire; we actually order that around October but for some reason we ordered it early. So we were able to keep warm.

On Saturday Afternoon through Friday Afternoon…

Now when Sandy hit and the lights went out we kept hearing a loud like bang sound- that was scary- it was the transformers that gave us light. Basically if one goes they all go because get over loaded. For that night it was scary the wind was bad, the house kind of moved a bit, we heard and saw trees cracking, neighbor pots and roof parts fall to the ground.

The next day for me to call my family in Brooklyn and Queens I had to drive to the Town of Hempstead (by Hofstra University about seven towns away) to get cell service. I did not like that we really did not have a sense of time.
Nights where scary, as I said we had police scanners for our area. So almost every night they were police looking for suspects what seemed all around us, we kept our ears on the scanners particularly for gas stations news and any crime around our area. Although my boyfriend and his brothers were used to having no electricity and were comfortable being in that environment, for me it was odd to see the full moon being the only light source to light up my street. I was so excited when I started to get random text messages towards the back of the house. I found that at my back yard I was able to send some text message or even call. So I would go out with my winter coats to the back yard lol to try to get service (and to get on Facebook haha) to call family. It did not really last, just enough to say I’m alive. :0) Still I think this might be temporary because the next block over and down the street from me still don’t have power.

Well anyway, that’s my story, I’ve always wanted to go camping but after this decided never to go, yup, and it’s just not for me. I spent my days sleeping, eating, attempting to do homework and playing with the dogs. As scary as it was at the same time it was pretty good- stressful because I felt like I was behind on homework-but otherwise good. Still part of the city and Long Island is like underwater I just pray for them to get through this disaster and everyone affected by this disaster.

Update from Sandy’s Brother “Randy”

So we had a snow storm I call it “Randy” well pretty much we lost power again. -__-