For years I kept journals -- in composition, spiral bound, and French graph paper books. This blog is an attempt to get back to writing and documenting the world around me using photos, newspaper headlines, and other articles.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sandy

Sunday morning we woke up to see a beautiful sunrise.  What is the expression about red sky at dawn?  No, not dawn, it's:  "Red sky at night sailor's delight.  Red sky in the morning, a sailor's warning?" 



Considering we were 60 miles from the ocean at the time I took the picture, I'm not sure that it was a true predictor of the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, but the colors were lovely.  Selim and I left the Ashram Sunday afternoon.  I wanted to get back home to make sure that we were prepared for the upcoming weather event.  I had bought flashlights, batteries, extra water, and some canned food.  We needed to take a walk around our property and pick up anything that had potential to be a projectile during the storm.

Sunday night, before the hurricane could be felt, we got the robocall letting us know that school would be cancelled in the morning.  It was nice to get it then, rather than 6:00 am.  We didn't set the alarm and enjoyed waking up on our own.  There wasn't anything spectacular happening in the morning.  But I took advantage of having power by running two loads of laundry and doing dishes.  We turned up the heat so that if we lost power, we would be starting with a warm house.

All morning I wondered if I would have to go into work.  At 11:00 the house phone and my cell phone rang with an emergency message that our building would not be having a second shift.  Yeah!  I was able to relax and just enjoy my day, waiting for the power to go out.

In the afternoon, the winds and rain picked up.  I made pumpkin pie and hot spiced cider for our afternoon snack.  We had gusts over 45 miles per hour.  I could see sheets of rain, blowing sideways down the street.  The Governor declared a State of Emergency and asked everybody to get off the roads by 3:00.   Around 3:00 the power flickered on and off a few times, but it never went out completely.



Nedim was antsy about the boat.  He wasn't able to get it out of the water over the weekend.  Every hour or so, he would say that he was going to go check on it.  But I reminded him that we were to stay off the roads and that his actions could be putting rescue workers at risk.  Since there wasn't anything he could do about a bad boat situation during the storm, he didn't need to go take a look.  He didn't go, but he was really fidgety.

Around 9:00 we got a call that school would be cancelled for a second day.  At 10:00 the phone rang again, this time letting me know that first shift would be delayed until 11:00.  I'm not on first shift anymore.  It is nice to know how well the central emergency notification system worked.

So today, we left the house around 9:00.  Our first stop was Barnes and Noble for retail therapy.  We had an hour to fill before Selim had a doctor appointment, and I wanted to see what the beach looked like.  The roads were open and there weren't any emergency signs indicating that we couldn't drive along the shore roads.  We went down Washington Street in Rye and then picked up Route 1A, south of Wallis Sands. 

The waves were roiling.  It must have been amazing last night at high tide.  As much as I wanted to bear witness to the storm's power, I wasn't going out last night just to see it.  There were lots of other people taking pictures this morning. 







My favorite house on that stretch of road was still standing and didn't look like it had sustained too much damage.




The seagulls were hanging out on the rooftops nearby.




Selim let me take a couple of pictures of him in between his, "Mom -- I'm freezing.  Mom -- it's windy.  Mom -- how many pictures do you need to take?  Mom -- can we get moving?  Mom -- I'm getting tired of this!"





We were lucky that we were spared the terrible damage from this storm.  The stories and pictures on the news this morning were so stunning.  They showed video from the evacuation from the NYU Hospital, NICU where the nurses were cradling the preemies.  They had to be carried down nine or ten flights of stairs, hand pumping oxygen the oxygen.  Since I have had weeks of NICU experience, I can't imagine the toll of an evacuation of that kind -- dreadful and miraculous at the same time. 

According to the Weather Channel or CNN, there are over 8 million people without power, stretching from New England, down through New York, New Jersey, PA and Indiana.  Places in WV are getting dumped on with snow.  This has been the "Frankenstorm" that the experts predicted.  I'm so grateful that we were not in the path of destruction. 

There was only one boat in the local marina that did not stay tied/anchored down.  It ended up on a nearby island.  But if that is the worst in our area, we are lucky indeed.

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