Hurricane Sandy was no joke. I have never experienced a storm like this in my life. While I’ve heard of hurricanes occurring in places like Florida and the Caribbean, I really didn’t know what to expect. Now that I’ve been through one, I know to take it very seriously if we ever get hit with another one. As many of the communities continue to clean up and re-build after Sandy, I wanted to reflect on some of the things I learned from hurricane Sandy.
Heed the warnings – days before the storm hit, local government officials took to the airwaves to let us know that this would be a significant storm. It was even given a nickname – “Frankenstorm”. But some chose not to take the storm seriously and were severely injured or killed by falling trees. Some of the injuries and deaths could have certainly been prevented if people took the storm seriously and stayed indoors and/or evacuated like they were advised to.
Be Prepared – with such a big storm coming, we knew we needed to purchase a few supplies. Last year, after hurricane Irene, we lost power for a few days, and since we have a private well, we were without water because the pump which sends water from the well into the house is powered by electricity. So this time around, we made sure we purchased lots of bottled water, non-perishable foods and batteries.
Make sure you know how to use your generator – After losing power for several days last year, we decided to buy a generator. We purchased it sometime in January and never tested it out to see how it worked. The day before the storm hubby and his brother rushed out to purchase oil and gas which it needed in order for it run. When the storm hit and the power got knocked out, hubby was able to power up the generator, but for some reason it kept conking out every few hours. This went on for a few days until he finally took the time to read the manual and learned that the generator needed to be vented order for it to run properly. Once he vented it, it worked perfectly.
Nearby businesses may be closed for days – it’s hard to imagine businesses being closed for days at a time, but that’s exactly what happened after Sandy. Just about all the businesses including stores, and gas stations in the area were closed. Garbage was not picked up, mail was not delivered – everything was at a standstill.
Portable cell phone chargers are invaluable – when I attended Blogher back in August, my cell phone battery had just about died when another blogger came to my rescue. She had a portable battery pack and gave my phone a little boost of power to get it back up and running. Shortly after that, I purchased my own external battery pack. This power pack allowed both hubby and I to charge our cell phones numerous times on just one charge which was extremely helpful.
Even thought your cell phone is charged doesn’t mean it will work – cellular service was almost non-existent. We tried to make calls and they either didn’t go through, and if they did happen to go through, the call would be dropped within seconds. Although we both had smartphones which allow us to get online, after Sandy our smartphones were reduced to “dumb phones.” Trying to access anything online was torturous because it was so slow. Texting seemed to work well though.
You may incur overage charges – Hubby and I relied heavily on text messaging to check in with our friends and family and as a way to communicate with each other. A few days after the storm, hubby received a text from ATT advising him that he had surpassed his texting limit for the month and would incur additional charges. We were outraged and complained. I’m guessing we weren’t the only ones who were upset because a few days later we received another text stating that any overages incurred up until the end of November would be waived.
Gas stoves need electricity to work – We have a gas stove. However, the mechanism which lights the burners on the stove is powered by electricity. We found an easy way around that though by using a BBQ lighter to fire up the burners.
Gas shortages can become a reality – Although we had gas in our vehicles, we needed to go purchase gas for the generator. Since most of the gas stations in our area were also affected by the power outage, gas became pretty scarce. We had to drive for miles to find an open gas station. We waited on line for gas for about 90 minutes. Eventually, our governor declared that odd/even gas rationing would be in effect. This meant that cars with odd numbered plates could only get gas on odd days and cars with even numbered plates could only get gas on even days. This dramatically caused the gas lines to really become shorter and eventually as more people were able to finally fill up their car, the lines became non-existent. Next time, we’ll try to be a little better prepared and buy more of those red plastic containers and fill them up before the storm.
Not all gas is good gas – After driving so far for gas, hubby decided to top up his gas tank because we both had no idea how long this gas shortage would last. On our way back home his car stalled. He thought it was odd but didn’t really think anything was wrong with his car. The next day, I drove his vehicle and it started bucking and losing power. I would push on the gas and the car would not go unless I floored the pedal. I actually got scared while I was driving it because I thought it would break down and leave me stranded. I managed to reach home safely and at that point the check engine light lit up. Philip consulted a with a few friends who advised him to purchase a few bottles of fuel treatment to throw into the fuel tank to improve the quality of the gas. Thankfully, the check engine light went away a few days later.
Washing machines can’t be powered by a small/mid-size generator – I planned ahead and washed all of our clothes before the storm hit. Philip actually thought that the our washing machine could be powered by the generator, but we discovered that it couldn’t. Good thing we had enough clean underwear to last us quite a few days.
Schools may be closed for days – My son’s school was closed for 6 days because of the storm. I did some impromptu home schooling for those 6 days, but keeping him occupied was not an easy feat.
Power may be out for an extended period of time – Our power was out for 9 days. Nine.Long.Days! We did have a generator, but it could not power up our whole house. We used it primarily to: power up or refrigerator so that we could preserve our food; power up the water pump; and power up the heat along with a few lights.
Generators are LOUD – many of our neighbors had generators as well and boy are those things loud. Most of us shut them down at night, but there were a few who kept them running all night. Let’s just say I didn't sleep for a few days because of all the noise.
This too shall pass – I knew that conditions would get better, and life would eventually get back to normal but that it would just take some time.
Many people were worse off than we were – we really didn’t incur much damage to our home. A small section of our wooden backyard fence was knocked down, but that was it. Once we were able to connect with the world again we learned that thousands of people were not so fortunate. So many people lost their homes and all their belongings. In addition quite a few people died as a result of the storm including two little boys. Hearing these stories of devastation caused me to reflect on how lucky we were and reminded me that I needed to count my blessings and stop complaining about the minor inconveniences caused by the storm.