Hurricane Sandy took off the face of this building (Photo credit: ccho)

On Monday, October 29th, Hurricane Sandy came to visit the northeast of the US. When I look at the calendar, that looks so very long ago but it really feels like it just happened. We live in the northeast of NJ which was right in the path of it. I promised I’d do a recap of our hurricane experience and people keep asking how it went for us so I’m going to do this quick post about it.

First off, I just want to start by saying that we were nowhere near any of the areas you’re seeing on the news that were completely destroyed. Even in our area, where there was damage from falling trees more than anything, we personally had almost no effects of that (several trees down by my parents, including one very large tree that did some damage but it missed the house and just about everything else really important so everyone feels very lucky on that account.)

On October 29th, our cable went out around 9 PM which was just about when the worst of the storm was getting going and our power went out a little bit later, around 10:30 ish. We didn’t get power back until the evening of Saturday, November 3rd and then cable (which, for us, includes phone & internet) came back early evening the next day. So, about 5 days without power, 6 days without phone/internet. We are insanely lucky in that our house uses natural gas so we had gas for cooking, hot water for showers and even a gas fireplace for heat so, even without power, we were just fine. The only casualty was some food we had to throw out but, overall, we got off about as easy as you could ask for.

Which brings up something else. There’s been a lot of talk about “survivor’s guilt” here in New Jersey and there is definitely a lot of that. You’re used to seeing disasters on the news that happen somewhere else and, as awful as those images are, it’s different when it’s your home turf. It’s not anonymous strangers with their houses getting flooded or having trees through their roofs, it’s friends, and it’s not just unfamiliar scenery getting destroyed, it’s places you’ve enjoyed going to throughout your life.

And sitting here, being someone for whom the hurricane was merely a mild inconvenience where we didn’t have power or internet for a few days, it’s hard not to feel really guilty for getting off so easy.

Adding to this is the awkward confession that there was something kind of nice about that week without power. It’s been a weird year and my husband and I haven’t really gotten to spend as much time together lately because we’ve both been working or out of sorts or both and suddenly, there we were, with nothing to do for an entire week . It feels awful to say that, that we were sitting here enjoying the rare alone time when others were having their worlds fall apart, but, disconnected from the rest of the world as we were, that’s the truth of the matter. When we had daylight, we did little jobs around the house that we’d been meaning to do or read and then, at night, we’d play board games by candlelight or just sit by the fire and talk. Other than listening to the radio occasionally, we really had no idea what was going on in the outside world since we couldn’t leave our house the entire time.

That was another thing I am extremely grateful for. My husband’s work usually never closes, no matter what’s going on in the world. They actually had work on the Monday of the storm but I didn’t let him go because he would have been driving home in the very worst of the hurricane. They ended up closing early that Monday and then didn’t get power back again until the following Monday. Which meant that he wasn’t driving on those dangerous roads some of which still aren’t cleared or having to battle crazy gas lines with the shortage. He spent the whole week safe at home with me. With local officials warning that the generators could fail on the gas lines, water and cell towers soon, I didn’t want to be separated from him if we were about to go the full I Am Legend any minute.

I know it sounds dramatic but, huddled in the dark with only a radio and spotty cell phone service because of failing towers, it really did sort of feel like the world was ending. It was scary and having us both home, safe and together saved it from being as stressful as it could have been. We decided to just pretend we were on a romantic vacation in our awesome cabin in the woods that didn’t have power or cable and that spending time together was our only priority. It managed to make a stressful situation into something a little more cozy, even with the creeping feeling that the world was ending outside our doors. So much so that when the power came back on and my husband ran off to deal with “power coming back on” related things, I was almost a little disappointed.

One of the strangest things was how we were sitting there the day of the storm seeing commercials on TV that were like, “Halloween is coming!” and when we got cable back there was nothing but Christmas commercials. It felt like we’d been deposited on the other end of a wormhole. It’s a little funny how that “lost week” is such common ground locally, from people at local businesses to my husband’s coworkers, we are all united in being totally disoriented about what day it is because we are all mentally a week off from the rest of the world.

That said, as I write this, one of my closest friends only just got power and water back this morning after 14 days without and there are still many local businesses and residents that are still completely without power, water, cable or all three. (I was trying to figure out what the loud noise was by CVS on Friday and finally realized they were running off a generator and still didn’t have power.) There are still roads everywhere that aren’t cleared yet which seems impossible this long after the storm. Things like this serve as small reminders of what a big storm it was and how it’s not going to be something any of us, least of all New Jersey as a state, is going to get over quickly.

So, anyway, that sums up our little Hurricane Sandy experience. It’s impossible not to view it outside of the context of how awful it was for everyone else with all the lives and property lost, especially those along the coast, and to feel a little guilty for just how little we were effected here. One thing I thought was really strange was how short these 5 days without power seemed compared to last year’s 5 days without power from the snow storm (which was just about a year ago to the day). Granted, this year we knew ahead of time that we’d lose power and prepared ourselves accordingly whereas last year’s week without power was a total surprise, but still. It’s amazing what a little perspective can do.

This post has gotten much longer than I planned so I’m going to rope it in now. The only lasting effect for me is that I am horribly behind on everything, especially NaNoWriMo. But my thoughts go out to everyone still suffering from this terrible storm and I hope that recovery is quick.

If you were in the effected area, how did you weather the storm?