Let me put this bluntly, Hurricane Sandy scared the hell out of me! Last year’s Hurricane Irene may have brought the floods to our area, but Sandy brought wind like I’ve never experienced before. The winds really started picking up between 5 and 6. That’s when my nerves starting getting the best of me. So Mike suggested that we go to bed. We anticipated a long night ahead anyway if the rain started to come down. So we decided to get some sleep in. Our basement tends to flood easily so if Mike was up all night making sure the pump was working, I’d be up to make sure he was okay. There was no way I was going to sleep anyway listening to the winds whipping at our house and everything around us!
Thankfully my husband finds my craziness adorable. He assured me I was safe, that the house wouldn’t come crashing down and nothing was going to fly through our windows. Somehow through the talking and laughing I managed to find sleep. It wasn’t easy though. For a while it seemed like anytime I started to drift into slumber, something banged the window and jolted me awake. Plus transformers were blowing on every street, lighting up the night sky like a firework show.
But this morning we woke up to find a calm. As my sister put it, it was like Dorothy waking up in Oz. There was no wind. There was only a misty rain. But there was plenty of clean up to be done. A lot of our town and towns surrounding us lost power. All that seems to be left of the Jersey shore are memories.
We are extremely lucky. We have power. Our family and friends are safe. Our cable was down at first, but internet and TV came back this afternoon. Unfortunately we’re rednecking it as far as our water goes. All of our water lines are connected to the sewer and when the sewer line rises too high, it can come into our basement and leave a stinky mess. So to spare details, we’ve gotten very creative to avoid a sewer flood happening. I can only pray our water situation is back to normal soon. But I am incredibly thankful that that’s our only problem coming out of the storm.
This afternoon we took a walk around our neighborhood to check out the damage. It’s unbelievable. It’s going to take a while to clean up. The entire state of New Jersey is a heartbreaking mess.
This is a tree right down the street from us. Thankfully the tree didn’t take down the line. If it had, we would be without power.
Down the entire view of this street is a criss-cross of yellow caution tape streaming across each block. Lines are down everywhere.
A power line came down and melted the asphalt.
A big chunk of sidewalk was shifted from an uprooted tree.
And so I don’t completely depress you, here’s a cute dog we met on our walk.
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