I hope this finds you all safe and in good health. I invite all faculty and students to share your storm stories and photos with our college community. Everyone is welcome –
Here is my own –
I was upstate when the storm hit with my wife and 2 1/2 year old daughter. We did not experience much rain and we did not experience the storm surge. We were without power by 2 pm on Monday and will likely be without power for up to two weeks. Without power we were cutoff from what was happening back home in the city. We lost about 5 trees – fortunately none of them fell on the main house – only my wood-shop.
I went out for provisions earlier in the day as we prepared for the storm – an made one more attempt about noon on Monday – but was quickly turned around and blocked in by down trees and power lines. The day after the storm we surveyed for fallen trees and were able to make it to the closest town – taking a round about route around blocked roads, debris & fallen trees. We noted where the power-lines were down and planned out our trip home while there was still light.
We spent two days in the dark without lights or heat. My daughter continued to try to turn on the light switches whenever we told her there was no power. We read stories using our flashlights and went to sleep by 8 – cuddled up to stay warm. For her it was just another adventure.
We left for Brooklyn on Tuesday evening as the sun set.
We headed straight to Coney Island – Zone A where my mom had waited out the storm. As we headed out along the belt parkway in the dark the familiar profile of Coney Island against the night sky was absent – as everything was blacked out. The streets were deserted – sand was everywhere and there were no street lights or traffic lights. When we came along Surf avenue we could see the high water mark on the buildings was about 5 feet. Cars had clearly been tossed around like toys – the car windows moist with evidence of the storm surge.
I made it up 20 flights in the dark- to knock on the door to my mothers surprise. We had no way to communicate and tell her we were coming. We gave her a charged cell phone and took her own so we could charge and return it the next day. This did little to help as service was completely out. We made several trips back over the week to bring food, ice and perishables.
Monday a week after the storm we evacuated my 83 year old mother.
My brother drove up from Virginia to take her to his home where she would be more comfortable. After a week she was still without heat. It appears that the electrical service to the main heating plant is still out – even though reports on the TV say that power is back on – the critical power is not. To make repairs ConEd will need to survey the manholes in the neighborhood – all of which are filled with sand. It will be a time consuming tasks and as of today I did not see any sign that this work had even begun. – so we chose to evacuate.
The rest of Coney looks like a war zone. Piles of sand as high as 30 feet in some places – people on the street being fed by the National Guard, others rummaging through bags of donated clothes. Much of the housing built since the end of the high-rise boom of the 70’s includes 3 story private row houses – all of which were inundated by the storm surge. Peoples belongings litter the streets, couches in front yards, ruined cars in the streets.
It is eerily quiet at night as the subways still do no reach the Stillwell Avenue train station. Without their cars and limited bus service it is a community cut off from the rest of the city. Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Sea Gate fare no better –
Stores are mostly shuttered and if they are open shelves are empty – some from looting, banks have not opened and many pharmacies are unavailable to an aging population. Starting the day after election day – children will be bused to other neighborhoods to attend school.
As a winter storm approaches I pray for the residents – many will need to be evacuated – and when more aid arrives the residents will be scattered with no means of communication to each other.
– can a community stay united under such stress? I wonder….
What scared me the most is the cables that were burning outside of my window i thought my whole apartment building was going to catch on fire but thankfully it didn’t as for those whose homes did get burned and damaged by water i’m extremely sadden by that.. Everytime i hear a new story it’s heartbreaking to hear. Hope everyone is safe
I’m really grateful that the area where I live wasn’t affected. But, I’m really sorry for the people who in any way were affected by the storm, especially to the ones who lost relatives and family members.
Hopefully, things will be back to normality soon, even though the city won’t be the same as it was.
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.
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 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.
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 kinda 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 use 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, 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. Still part of the city and Long Island is like underwater I just pray for them to get through this disaster.
A brief summary of my Sandy experience: As I sit by the window in my Lower East Side apartment on the first floor, just a block away from the Hudson, I watched the water rise up on the street drowning the cars; it was dark, electricity has already been gone for about an hour at least. At that point, I am thinking that how high will it rise? Will it be high enough to flood my apartment? Quickly I jumped off the chair, found some gluesticks (for my glue-gun), took the shelves off a 6ft high bookshelf and completely prepared to melt the gluesticks to seal the sides of the bookshelf to make a boat. Again, I sat by the window, patiently, watching the car alarm going off on almost all the cars sunk under the water.
By 2am, the water level deceased by half, I went outside, snapped some pictures. All relaxed and calm. By the morning, all water has gone back to the river. For that entire week, the water and the electricity was off and carried as much as 40 pales of water from a block away from the fire-hydrant for the family.
An unique experience that thought us a lesson to be prepared, united the neighbors, and everyone I am sure spent quality time with family. I thank God for such a relieve knowing what others went through and prayed, and prayed some more for those have been devastated by Sandy.
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. I found this very neat interactive link showing you before and after. Figured some of you guys would like to check it out.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/03/before-after-hurricane-sandy-photos_n_2068996.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Hope everyone is safe, and see you guys on Friday.
Everybody thought hurricane sandy was going to be the same as last years storm, Irene. I thought so as well. My basement has been known to flood because of drainage problems. I got it fixed in preparation for the storm, but i was flanked by another problem. I live near the water, the water level rose as high up as the side walk. The sea water backed up the sewers and then started to stream into the basement. I freaked! I took everything valuable upstairs and let it be. Unfortunately, during the rush i lost my flash drive. I have some work saved on blackboard, but it isn’t enough. the next day, looking outside you can see a lot of the plants and shrubs were dieing because of the salt water that washed up ashore…
By my house there was heavy rain all night a few trees fell on the street, others in top of cars. Thanks God we didnt loose power in my building but we did take all the precautions. The trains didnt work as we all know and i had to take the shuttle busses to get to Brooklyn and it was very crazy at night to go back to the Bronx to almost the last stop of the 4 train. The lines for people to take the bus were extremely long and crazy! People were fighting to get into the busses. Thanks God i didnt have to wait there all night instead took an alternative train then 2 more busses to get home. I missed work for a whole week which is very bad since i pay all my bills and rent.
Before the storm came in, my family split up so we stayed in different places. My sister and I stayed at a friend’s house in Queens while my parents stayed at my grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn. Impact in Queens wasn’t too hard except for some flickering lights and discontinued internet. We were able to go home when the Verrazono bridge reopened on Tuesday/Wednesday (I forget). Taking the road on Midland was a bad idea, as you basically had better chances of getting anywhere by canoeing than driving. At home, we could see a muddy line left on the basement walls, indicating how high the water got before it receded. The line was ~ 8 feet above ground level, short of reaching the first floor by about 3 feet. The next few days, the entire block spent the entire time cleaning the basements and throwing everything out. The neighbors ordered a large 20 gallon disposal tank and was nice enough to let us use it, providing we pay our part of the cost. It took less than 10 minutes for the block of 4 families to fill it to the brim, and we were barely done. The seawater also took out our electricity and heat generator so it was too cold for us to stay in the house. We basically could not live in our own house for almost a month’s time. We got our power back 2 weeks ago so we can move back in, but my area just doesn’t feel the same anymore what with all the closed stores and emergency relief camps. We are still renovating the basement but we are technically fine for the moment. I like to think that despite the hardships we faced during this hurricane, we actually got off better than most other people. I only lost everything in my basement (including a very large 48″ tv. Carrying that out was NOT fun.) but others lost their entire homes and even family. The experience really makes you step back for a second and realize how truly lucky you are compared to those less unfortunate.