Like millions of others around me, I recently suffered through Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy. I lived in the Midwest my whole life until earlier this year when I relocated to the greater New York City area. Therefore it was my first hurricane experience. I’d be perfectly happy if it was my last.
It was a harrowing experience. It’s hard to explain what it was like to go through. The wind was worse than anything I’ve seen. I’m sure a tornado is worse, but I’ve never been in one of those (there have been some close calls over the years though) and they are usually there and gone in minutes, at most. This storm, with its high winds gusting at times near 100mph, lasted several hours. In the living room, we have a sliding glass door leading out to a balcony. The door was closed tight, and locked. But for hours the wind was coming through the door and rattling the vertical blinds, which were closed more for psychological comfort than physical protection.
I spent the bulk of the storm in the den, which had smaller windows that I assumed were somewhat safer. When I went through the living room I did so quickly, and didn’t linger. The stupid cats wanted to look out the door, so I had to keep them shut in the other room with me.
For most of the evening I had the TV on, tuned to a local station or to CNN. I checked Twitter constantly, and got almost as much information that way. That was, until the power went out around 9:30pm. As far as I was able to determine, much of town had lost power before that, and I was daring to hope we’d escape that fate. Alas, we didn’t.
I spent the rest of the storm in the dark, literally and figuratively, as I was disconnected from my information sources (avoiding use of my phone to conserve battery). Eventually it calmed down enough that I was able to go to bed and get some sleep.
A couple days later–the power still off–I ended up going to Philadelphia, which is about a 2 hour drive away, or would have been if it didn’t take half an hour to get out of town due to road closures. There I met up with the bf and we hung out for a couple days in a hotel. We returned home Saturday afternoon, and the power had only come on a few hours before.
I got to miss the nor’easter as I was out of town for work.
All things considered many people were much more dramatically impacted by Sandy than I was. Some people lost their homes, some lost their lives. So I still count my blessings, and I feel for those who were less fortunate.
The cleanup is ongoing, and there are still people that need help. Don’t forget just because the media does.
Bruiser Blog 