Follow the link below for my Storm Story Video on Vimeo-osmanycabrera
I wasn’t prepared for the Storm Sandy like most of people I know, because we didn’t believe the forecast. On Sunday afternoon, I received the phone call from Coned that the power around our home will be out when the storm hit, so I panicked as a single mom with 2 kids (10yrs & 8yrs). I took my kids and rushed out to buy food that didn’t requires cooking, more candles and more water. The grocery shopping trip was not plansant, my kids started to panic so my biggest chanlenges were how to keep my kids safe, calm and entertained. I could not think about anything else but survive.
Our home is on the service road of the L.I.E., there are big trees at front and back of our house. When the power out on sunday night, the road was empty, my kids were not able to sleep because of the scary wind and tree branches hitting the windows.
During and after Super Storm and Hurricane Sandy, my neighborhood had a lot of strange unusual things happen. I live right off Atlantic Avenue in Queens, about a mile away from the Van Wyck Expressway and 15 mins away from the JFK Airport; you can tell by the location that it’s a very busy city. It wasn’t much of a busy city anymore when the hurricane hit. There were very minimal cars on Atlantic Ave, and streets were quiet. When the storm first struck all you heard was wind, and pieces of debris hit against the house. As it started raining and the wind gusts picked up branches starts to fall off trees and were tangled in the phone and power line, my family was afraid we’d loose power because of the tall tree across the street that had its branches intact with the power lines. Fortunately, we did not loose power even though the lights flickered ever so often.
We started to hear noises like fire crackers bursting close by and from far off distances. I did not know what the sound was until news reporters on the news said those were “transformers” sparking. It was frightening to know that a fire could start, since we were hearing the crackling close by. In an event, we were somewhat prepared to run out the house in case of a fire.
From the view of our house we could see the pole line slanted, threatening the gas station it was hovering over; 3 blocks away, as a result the gas station was blocked off.
After the storm, Monday morning we were able to analyze the damages around our house.
The roof tiles of our house had flown off onto the ground, as well as the neighbors garage’s roof tiles. Our gutter was unattached to its other pieces and floating. a phone line was hanging along our driveway. We also had a few minor leaks that needed to be tended, which made us glad our basement did not flood.
The day after, when we were able to go to far distances, on Wednesday, we saw that the streets and blocks before and after ours were heavily impacted. Trees were down all over the place, where as my block had mainly debris, branches, and power lines down. I also heard from friends not far from my place that they has no power.
A couple of days after, as people started to return home, there was increased traffic across the Atlantic Ave. towards Brooklyn. And for a week now, I see a long line of cars waiting for gas across Atlantic Ave, when gas is received. The amount and length of cars are just ridiculous to describe.
Overall, I feel very fortunate that my family and I were not extremely impacted as compared to others. And I feel deeply for those that have been impacted and have lost a lot due to this storm.
One of the good things I got out of this disaster was that I was very observational about the damages and their causes. I even took a look around at the Brooklyn Bridge Water Front and some areas surrounding that were heavily impacted and took photographs.
As an architect student I feel that there’s a lot of things that can be done to avoid such damages. For example: why are trees so close to phone and power lines, why aren’t that branched off away from those lines? And why isn’t there a better housing system for protecting them from damages? I feel that this storm has made me think a lot more about my work, and what I should really pay attention to according to this event.
This is my story.
I didn’t get affected much by the storm, but my main concern was loosing power. Due to the fact that I had work to get done for class. What really affected me was the shut down of the MTA, which made it VERY difficult to travel across town from 42nd street and below.
I was extremely fortunate in this terrible storm. I live in Astoria, and the worst thing that happened was a few down trees. I had driven upstate to my parents house in Orange County, NY to help them on Tuesday because they had also lost power. They were without power from Sunday night until Friday morning. The gas lines are extremely long, and it’s nearly impossible to find generators.
My grandmother is also living in a nursing home in Coney Island, who unfortunately was not evacuated. They had lost power during Sunday night, and the Generators failed mid Monday. She was hospitalized to Beth Israel sometime on Wednesday night. Luckily she was fine, I think it was a combination of anxiety that she had been receiving from being within the dark and confined nursing home. Everyone has finally been restored power, and the low lying area’s are being built back up. It’s amazing to see how many New Yorkers are reaching out to help.
I also have a very close family friend who have a summer home in Brick Township, NJ. Their town was completely destroyed by the storm. The infamous bridge connecting the bay area with Tom’s River was completely washed out and destroyed. They were fortunate because of the way their house was constructed. When they had decided to build the house, they put a large brick planter that runs the front facade of the house. This allowed all of the ocean water to be diverted around their house and allowed it to flow into the bay. I found this very neat interactive link showing you before and after. Figured some of you guys would like to check it out. Here are some photos of their neighborhood as well.
Although there were many many people who were affected by the storm, i for one was not affected that much. The two biggest things the affected me the most was internet loss and mta problems. Other than that, everything else was okay. I am sorry for those who got the worst of it because they may not be able to repair most of the things they lost.
I was at home when the hurricane came to the city . My area wasn’t affected , only few trees fall down and the power went out . There were buildings using its own power supply. The day after the hurricane, all the stores in my area were closed, the lights were off and people were walking on the streets. At the afternoon, I found with my mom an open restaurant .In there were many people doing the line to order ., others were talking to each other about how the Sandy hit in their areas. After few minutes one of the workers close the restaurant door from inside. Meanwhile I was eating I could see people knocking the door trying to enter the restaurant.
The subway didn’t run for a week so I had to take the bus . I hope that everybody was safe during the hurricane.
I live in the East Bronx, hopefuly during the storm nothing hapen around my area just few trees down like two blocks away from my house. during the store I was at home working for my projects almost for the whole week, I knew that everything in New York was in chaos but it wasn’t until friday when I realized what really was happening, I came to school on friday I had to wake-up at 5am just to get early to class even though I did that the train was so crowed that people hardly could got in, trains only run up to 42 street and then to get to downtown Brooklyn I had to take the shutle bus and as long the bus was running from down town manhattan to brooklyn, it semed to me like I was coming across a ghost town the only lights I saw were the flare and cars lights.
Jose Gonzalez
When the storm hit I was at home in Brooklyn East New York. One of the first things I did was to make sure my family moved their cars away from trees. I do admit I was worried because New York does not get storms like this, even thou we had Irene last year the news said it was going to be a lot worse. During the storm I did see the trees in the backyard swaying a lot, and luckily they did not fall. Around 5 pm a leak began on in room, not in form of a drip but like a kitchen sink turn on. My brothers and I ran to the ceiling and covered the section with a plastic sheet. The next day I walk around to see the area and it was not bad at all.
My story storm
When the storm came, I was in Woodside with my some who is 22 years old, I listened how the wind and the rain make noises, I saw the reflect of some lights in my windows. I felt like if I were part of the scared movie at the moment, but the reality was good for me because I only lost the signal for the internet an cable for 3 days. I had to be home because the transportation by trains was suspended and the buses were totally full with sign that said “next bus please”.
On the other hand, I saw some trees down in my neighborhood. I said” thanks God because We “my son and I” are okay.
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