A recap of this week’s happenings with Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy, for the most part, finished its course on Tuesday. Its effects were – and still are – being felt throughout the East Coast, however.
As a New Yorker, the entire experience was pretty frightening. There are a bunch of large trees scattered around the property – some of which could be healthier – so with each wind gust, I was concerned that one of them could come crashing into the house.
And man… I have never in my life heard the wind howl like it did. We honestly didn’t get much rain here (which probably helped out the trees’ stability), but the wind was enough to drive me insane. When you’re hearing those strong gusts for 12-24 hours, they’ll drive some terror in your heart!
I mentioned earlier this week that our power was cut on Monday. That was around… 6:30 ET. Obviously the lack of power brings about a huge amount of problems. It’s not until it’s gone that you realize how important electricity is in our day-to-day activities.
I notified Austin that he may need to take over NE/GE prior to Sandy’s arrival, yet I still had a pit in my stomach over the fact that I couldn’t contribute to the sites. Am I insane? Quite possibly!
Heading to a Wi-Fi spot during the hurricane was most definitely out of the question. Once the storm passed on Tuesday though, a friend luckily agreed to let me stop by for a few hours for some site updates.
That was basically what it was like throughout most of the week: searching for Wi-Fi spots, heading home at 4:30 ET so I could eat dinner before total darkness, and then spending seven hours in complete darkness. That’s what things were like around the Valay household before the power somewhat unexpectedly returned Thursday night.
Fun times! Well, no, not really.
No traffic lights. No lights in general. No people on the streets. Lots of fallen trees and wires. Property damage.
In the end I’m extremely grateful though. There are thousands upon thousands in the East Coast without power still, homes that have been demolished, and peoples’ lives that have been destroyed. I truly feel for the affected families out there and hope that some sort of normalcy can be established in the future.
Brief picture time!
That’s across the street here. A huge tree fell over and sprawled itself over the driveway, so the people inside this house were stuck inside (basically) until it was chopped up and removed.
A random downed wire. It’s kind of hard to make out in this photo.
These photos were taken a bit further down the block. Lots of trees on the house and on the ground. I’m not entirely sure if their house was severely damaged, but I can’t imagine things being too swell here…
Hopefully this week wasn’t too abnormal for you folks in terms of site updates. I truly apologize for not being able to maintain my usual routines.
Having said that, I really have to thank Austin and Patrick for helping me out. I’d say they were able to replicate updates on NE/GE very well.
Believe me… when I couldn’t get to the sites, it drove me bananas. I literally spend almost every available moment of my time on NE/GE-related activities, and since they’re such integrated parts of my life, being unable to update and not knowing what was going on wasn’t easy!
