Where I live, we were warned about a week in advance that
Hurricane Sandy might make a left turn from the course it was on, going up the
Atlantic. The new projected path would
send it directly into the Jersey Shore. And
since this was combining with a nor’easter into a super storm, the entire
heavily populated Northeast Corridor could be at risk. By Friday afternoon, there was no longer any
question about it. It was definitely going to make that left turn and come
right at us. As I watched the news on
the networks and the Weather Channel, it only got worse. Soon, Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia was on, as
well as Governors Christie of New Jersey and Corbett of Pennsylvania. Everyone
was warning that this storm would be dangerous and lives and property were definitely at
stake.
It seemed like a lot of hype, especially considering the
last big storm that came through about 14 months ago. Hurricane Irene was felt in our area, but
didn’t produce the devastation that forecasters predicted it could bring. This sentiment was expressed especially along
the coast, where people heeded the government warnings to evacuate the shore
towns, especially the barrier islands, most of which were no more than a few
blocks wide, with the ocean on one side, and the bay on the other. The storm did indeed bring plenty with
it. However, it seemed the damage was
minimal for all the warnings that were issued. Now these same warnings were issued, and now
they were more urgent than they were for last year’s big storm. The eye of the hurricane would make landfall
in either Delaware or New Jersey, and would arrive as a category 1
hurricane. Coastal flooding was a very
real possibility from the Carolinas to New England. Everyone in the path of the storm had been
hearing all of this all weekend. But, of
course, they heard those same warnings last year and were skeptical. A storm was coming, of course, but they had
been through all kinds of storms before, and felt they had seen everything. It may have been rough at times, but
everything always stayed intact. This
sentiment is typified by a woman from one of the shore towns being interviewed
for a local news program. She had lived
on the Jersey Shore a good part of her life, and had been through everything. Last year, she heeded the evacuation orders
for Hurricane Irene and moved inland to stay with friends. It turned out that her friends lost their
power, but nothing happened to her home on the shore.
However, this time everything seemed to be happening exactly
as the meteorologists were predicting.
Even as this was going on, the “here we go again” attitude was
prevailing in some shore residents, like the woman referenced above. They watched as the wind picked up and the
rains began to fall. They watched as the
warnings and pleas to get off the barrier islands grew stronger and more
urgent. Governor Christie, who is not
known for mincing words, could not convince them either. So they waited and watched as the rain and
winds grew heavier and stronger, even as the ocean began to crash through the
sand dunes and turn the streets into rivers.
They walked around with their cameras and documented this as it was
happening, and soon their pictures began appearing all over the social media
outlets. But many of these diehards
eventually had all they could handle, and those who could do so found their way
to the designated evacuation points or made last ditch 911 calls. But a few were determined to go down with the
ship if they should have to.
The storm apparently weakened somewhat once it made
landfall, although it was still strong enough to cause plenty of damage when it
reached my town, about 60 miles inland.
Fortunately, the town I live in sits on a hill and there is not much
worry about flooding. There are plenty
of valleys around our town that are prone to flooding, but we’re fairly safe. But no one is safe from the wind and pounding
rain. The wind howled throughout Monday
into the small hours of Tuesday. I
remember going to sleep at 10 to the sound of the perpetually roaring winds,
and then waking up around 2am to relative quiet. The winds had died down. The next day, just about everything was
closed or shut down, so I was able to take a walk around to visually assess the
damage Sandy had caused. There were
plenty of downed trees and generators humming.
Now, as I finish writing this, it is over a week later, and
things are back to normal here in Bucks County.
The Jersey Shore, of course, is a different story. The cleanup will be going on there for a
while, and hopefully it will be ready to receive its tourists by the time
summer arrives. Although these were the
two areas I was watching most closely during the storm, there were plenty of
other areas of the Northeast hard hit by this storm, including West Virginia,
which received a lot of snow. But it
appears the coastal areas were the hardest hit, and which have the most to lose
from all the damage.
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