This time we were more than ready. When reports about
potential storm disaster from super-storm Sandy carried over the air waves, my
family took them to heart. We remembered all too well the problems with Irene
and Lee and felt that Sandy looked far more ominous and dangerous. The radar
images showed a storm perfectly capable of covering the entire eastern
seaboard, and in fact the outer bands of the storm did bring a bit of rain and
some minor winds to the area.
Still, as we cleaned up the yard, put away lawn chairs,
locked down plastic trash cans, and unchained the porch swing, I wondered about
the storm track. I have had a lot of experience with hurricanes, and I know
that late season hurricanes are particularly hard to track. For one thing,
there aren’t many of them to use as tracking samples, and for two the colder
ocean temperatures cause them to do odd things. Hurricanes are hard to track
anyway, but ones like Sandy are extremely difficult to herd.
So, although I went along with the general clean up and
gathering of flashlights, candles, oil lamps, and matches, I wondered just
exactly how much of the storm would affect us. All of the tracking that I saw
called for the storm to move north of Richmond, some of them quite a bit north,
with a more likely landing on the Eastern shore or in Maryland. Even if the
guess was right on, it was hard for me to believe that we would get much more
out of Sandy than we actually did. Sandy was too far away to have any
catastrophic weather problems here, I thought.
But a warning is a warning and the preparations always serve
as a good drill. With the schools closed for two days, my family hunkered down
to ride things out, while I calmly went about my business and drove to work.
As it turned out, the storm wobbled a bit further north than
anticipated, coming ashore near Cape May, New Jersey, and heading up the Jersey
shore. Atlantic City probably got the worst of all hits. Around home, we waited
as the TV news kept moving back the time when Richmond would feel the strongest
effects of the mega-storm. First it was Sunday night, then it was Monday, and
finally it was supposed to be at its worst around midnight Monday.
To be honest, we have had much more damaging squalls than
what Sandy brought to the Tri-Cities. That’s not to say the storm wasn’t
dangerous. It was, but we clearly, weren’t part of its main thrust.
Where the storm did hit, it caused dire problems. All along
New Jersey’s shore, power outages, flooding, trees down—the sort of damage one
expects from a hurricane. On Long Island, things may actually have been worse.
In addition to the flooding, power outages, and trees down, fires raged in
several areas burning down scores of homes and leaving many people with little
left than the lot on which their homes had stood. More than 100 homes in Breezy Point burned to
the ground.
And then there’s New York City itself. It says something
when Wall Street closes for two days. But how long it may take for the city to
right itself no one can tell. Tunnels filled with water, subways with water
woes, and power outages all over.
The government is guessing that Sandy may cost as much as
$20 billion in damage. That would probably be a record for a storm. Topping $10
billion would put the storm damage in the top five, including Katrina and
Andrew.
We in the Tri-Cities were fortunate that the storm did very
little damage. Now it’s time to support those areas of the country that came to
our aid when hurricanes put us out of commission for months.
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