My power came on this evening after Hurricane Sandy knocked it out 9 1/2 days ago. My home suffered very minor mostly cosmetic damage. And while many people have lost their homes completely and a few their lives the photo below is iconic in terms of what has been done to the New Jersey Shore region. This is the Seaside Heights boardwalk roller coaster that now sits in the ocean.
Those of you who saw the advertisements on television this past summer promoting the return of the gulf coast vacation business, expect to see those ads for the Jersey Shore in a year or two as well.
Hello Raphael, Glad to hear that you are back with power. Sorry to hear of the damage to your home. What a mess it must be. Hope things get back to normal soon for you and your community there.
Glad to hear that you’re OK, Raphael. I hope your family had a place to stay and enough provisions to make it less disruptive for you. Just how often does your basement flood? Did you mistakenly think I was coming to see you?
Greg I thank you for your kind thoughts. I went to Home Depot at 7:30am on Saturday, October 27th. I left at 6:30pm with a 6000 watt generator. As a result I was able to keep my basement dry and my food fresh. And happily had enough power to share with a neighbor who also has a dry basement and fridge full of preserved food. It did get cold in the house and the unrelieved darkness at night was very disheartening at times, but we bundled up and played 20 questions and kept sane.
If anything has come out of this it is that people can in difficult times rise to the occasion and be kind and generous to each other. As many services as I provided to neighbors and strangers I received back from other neighbors and other strangers.
The worst thing to come out of this aside from the obvious devastation that many have suffered to their selves and property is that in the face of a lack of information from town authorities and the power company, rumor mongering runs rampant and causes a lot of unnecessary worry and fear. I heard dire estimates from people not in the know that we’d have no power until Thanksgiving and that would be a cause for some panic.
But the generator unfortunately does mean that if you visit I will have to come up with a new excuse for not meeting you.
Glad to hear that you and your family are OK. I spent many summers on the shore there, and still have family in the area, waiting to hear from them through the family grapevine. I was saddened to see the roller coaster photo, and others depicting the devastation on the coast, great memories. Good luck to you in the upcoming days.
Good to hear you are okay.
Down here in Southwest Louisiana, we are thinking about you all and empathizing with you!!
After Rita in 2005, we were without power for about 2 weeks… in the dark, in early September. Instead of being cold, we were blazing HOT. We, too, got really tired of the dark! It makes you think about what people did with their time before electricity. We were also quite fortunate to have a generator.
Okay, so with two of you having gone through two different major storms on two different coasts, and almost losing everything, do you ever consider moving somewhere safer?
I’m not trying to be crass or ugly, but my mom used to live in Gulfport and the home she lived in was “blown away” after the last big storm hit that area.
At what point do folks pack it in and move to a safer location?
It’s just gonna get worse over time, rising water levels, bigger tides, bigger events.
We don’t live on the beach, but rather 25 minutes north. This is not a resort community. We just happened to be in the direct path of the storm. The wind blew over tree after tree. My mother’s house was split in half by a tree that was blown over. We don’t live in a flood zone. Some people live in areas prone to tornadoes, or fires, or floods, or earthquakes, etc. We have hurricanes now and then. Most of the time it’s a minor inconvenience. The last bad one here, prior to Rita, was in 1957, over 50 years ago (Hurricane Audry).
I doubt JJuggle sees a hurricane way up north very often. We don’t see one very often either. Just wondering how many people would have to move if we all lived where there is no risk of natual disaster.
JJuggle… Hope things are getting better, and easier, every day!
I don’t know, we’ve had 2 hurricanes and 2 early big snow storms within the last 15 months. Connecticut used to be relatively safe weather wise. Something’s up.
I’ve never lived anywhere that had a high risk of natural disaster unless you count the earthquakes in California.
We’re in the process of looking for our next home, it will for sure not be anywhere prone to natural disasters, so no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no excessive heat or cold, no earthquakes, no floods.
There are an amazing number of choices, in fact mostof the United States is relatively safe from natural disaster.
Good luck to everyone in their efforts to clean up and move on.
Thank you for your kind thoughts Ben. And we wish you luck in finding your Eden. I’m not entirely sure why you would suggest that we discount California and its earthquakes. Is there some way in which they do not qualify as natural disasters?
Touting Sacramento again:
Unlike the Bay area and LA basin, we are relatively free of earthquakes. That’s why Intel has a lot of its critical data centers out here. Just don’t buy real estate on a flood plain and you’ll be fine.
Ha ha. That’s probably funnier here, where thousands of houses have recently been built on a 100-year flood-plain. I think that 100 years is likely to get a lot shorter…
