Wind, Floods, and No School: Hurricane Sandy in New York City

        On the night of October 29th my family was gathered in our living room. You could almost feel our apartment building swaying and being absolutely battered by the heavy winds. The grim forecast of Hurricane Sandy seemed to be coming true.

        In the days before, my 8 year old self expressed some doubt about what I was hearing. When Hurricane Irene hit New York the year before, to my very limited perspective, it did not do as much damage as the weather forecasters on the news had said it would. The day before Sandy hit I helped my mom apply strips of duct tape to the windows in our apartment and plywood to the windows in the hallways of the building. We went to a grocery store and a lot of shelves had been cleared out and were completely empty. I listened to my parents chat with the neighbors about the impending hurricane, but I myself was not worried. I certainly thought that I would be going to school the next morning, as I was not buying the hype of the hurricane. 

Hurricane Sandy absolutely devastated the infrastructure of New York City and the livelihoods and property of thousands of New Yorkers. At some point during the night of the 29th, the power went out in my house, and hundreds of thousands of other houses across New York City alone. When I returned to school after it was closed for three days after, only half of the class was there. I quickly learned that the absence of one of my friends was because the basement portion of his Downtown Brooklyn apartment had been completely flooded and more or less destroyed. Floodwaters had swept through the streets of New York absolutely decimating the subway system, most of which had to be closed. Trees were knocked over by the wind claiming a number of lives. A crane was knocked over by the winds in midtown, and was left dangling off a skyscraper hundreds of feet in the air. 

Hurricane Sandy exceeded the previous flooding levels of storms in New York City, and shattered expected levels of damage. Part of the reason for this was not only its powerful magnitude, but it also hit New York at a point when the water was at a high tide, accelerating flooding. 43 people died in New York alone, mostly from drowning, as evacuation efforts fell short. As it turns out, most New Yorkers shared my own outlook of not believing the forecast and impending intensity of the storm. The storm definitely marked the increasing possibility of climate change induced hazards, which will only get worse with time, especially for high populated areas like New York City. 

Halloween did not happen in the same way much to my dismay, and the first ever regular season Brooklyn Nets game was postponed. Hurricane Sandy definitely stayed in the conscious memory of myself as well as the collective consciousness of New Yorkers, as storms have continued to wreak havoc. It is especially important to consider how storms and floods continue to have a disproportionate effect on lower income people who rely on public transport, live in basement apartments, and have less ability to evacuate or fix the damage these storms cause. 

Sources:

Barron, James. “Storm Barrels through Region, Leaving Destructive Path.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Oct. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/us/hurricane-sandy-churns-up-east-coast.html. 

Cynthia Rosenzweig, William Solecki, “Hurricane Sandy and adaptation pathways in New York: Lessons from a first-responder city,” Global Environmental Change, Volume 28, 2014, Pages 395-408, ISSN 0959-3780, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.05.003.

Images:

“Crane Dangles from NYC High-Rise as Hurricane Sandy Bears down on City.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 30 Oct. 2012, www.cbsnews.com/news/crane-dangles-from-nyc-high-rise-as-hurricane -sandy-bears-down-on-city/. 

Dzieza, Josh. “Hurricane Sandy’s Lesson for Flood-Proofing a Subway.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 14 July 2017, www.thedailybeast.com/hurricane-sandys-lesson-for-flood-proofing -a-subway.