Sandy

The lights are on. The children are back in school starting Monday. The gas lines are gone. Our offices are open for business. It has been a crazy two weeks here in my corner of NJ: first Hurricane Sandy knocked our lights and heat out for a week, then a Nor'Easter that turned into a snow storm when it sucked more cold air than expected which snapped several of our trees in half. I am ready to move to Nevada.

The day of the hurricane started out simply enough. My wife's office and our town's schools closed for the day, giving the rest of my family a day off. My office closed for the day but many of us were able to telecommute as normal. I did my early morning workout as usual and, upon leaving, noticed the sign that all classes after 5PM were cancelled. When I got home, I told my wife that her evening spin and dancing classes were cancelled, so she decided to go early while I worked and kept the children from killing each other. Things quickly deteriorated weather wise. Before long she was calling me to say the Y would be closing at 1:30 due to weather. I told her to try to get bread as we were running low, the one thing I forgot to buy enough of before the storm. Ha ha. By then all she could find were bagels.

She came home and I finished my work day as usual. Dinner and watching TV that evening were also pretty normal, except we were just watching the news from NYC. The lights started flickering around 6PM and at 7, just as flood waters were starting to hit Manhattan, we lost most of our cable stations, save the ones from Philadelphia. I soon turned to Facebook, which became a lifeline for us through the following week. Friends from the city started posting pictures of streets flooding in Manhattan, and not just in lower Manhattan. Just as I was thinking this going to be worse than realized, the lights went out with a sudden certainty. At that point we knew that was it for electricity and we were back in the 19th century. 

The next morning the storm had mostly passed. I put the tea kettle on my outside grill to make instant coffee for my wife and I as we dined on cold cereal, mostly to get rid of the milk. I took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, checking out the tree damage and walked up to Route 9, a major north/south highway with many commercial establishments that adjoins our development. Traffic was moving, but as I walked up to the nearby intersection with a traffic light I saw it was dark. Uh oh. Our development has underground wires, so I  knew we'd come back once the grid was re-energized. At that time I didn't appreciate how long that would be.

We didn't have much storm damage, just some big branches down on our lawn, and we are far enough away from the shore to not have to worry about flooding, so we took a long walk around the development with the kids after lunch. We saw many large trees down, but, with a few exceptions, little damage to structures and cars. After seeing power was still out on 9, except for the generated powered supermarket, where things were so crazy that the police were called and employees were checking receipts (I now know it will take less than 48 hours for this town to go full anarchy if there ever was a disaster worse than a power outage). We went back home, turned on the radio to a NJ news station, lit a fire and settled in for the night. Except, unlike previous blackouts, we had smart phones and were able to keep track of very local news.It was then I learned that almost the entire town (and surrounding areas) were without power (I swear Facebook kept me sane). I also saw a very brief clip about a fire in the Rockaways, near where I went to high school, and flooded basements in my old hometown of Howard Beach. It would be another day until I saw how bad things were. My wife said we should just consider it camping out with comfy, if cold, beds. Fortunately we have a fireplace, a full rack of wine, and, courtesy of Sandy, plenty of fuel for the fire, so we spent the evening relaxing in front of the fire, the kids on their newly charged video games, my wife reading a book with a flashlight, and me reading an ebook I downloaded from the library just before the storm, on my back-lit iPad, as I knocked out a bottle of wine.

Day 3. I cooked the remaining eggs, egg whites and cheese in two giant egg omelets on the grill, along with the instant coffee (I am definitely buying a stove top peculator as soon as I can find one, the camping sections of nearby sporting goods stores are still pretty empty). My brother, about 20 miles away as the open roads went, had power and our freezer was starting to defrost so I loaded up the car with our electronics, freezer and family and drove over there. It was then I finally understood how bad the power situation was. Not a single traffic light was functioning on Routes 9 and 18 (similar to 9) until we got to the NJ Turnpike (fastest ride ever, as the intersections were blocked, making the road seem like a real highway). I noticed no gas stations and few generator powered stores open. On Route 1, we again saw not a single light or open business, except for a liquor store, of course, until we neared my brother's house. Suddenly, we saw a working light and then we were in a horrific traffic jam. It took us over 10 minutes to get to the next intersection, but before we even got that far we realized what the problem was, a gas line at an open gas station (I wisely had topped off my car's tank the night before the storm). We eventually made it to my brother's and, after unloading my backpack of electronics, I lost it when I discovered my iPad was not in the box. I basically went into one of my old rages (I later realized that I probably had forgotten to take my meds that morning, once we didn't have heat, lights or electricity, our schedules got all messed up). Very disturbing, but now I know -- 2 days of a disaster is all I can take.

Anyway, we asked my sister-in-law if we could put on the news as we really had no idea what was going on outside our immediate area, especially in New York. It was then I finally saw the videos of the burnt out Rockaways, the flooded Howard Beach and Broad Channel, and all the damage at the Jersey Shore. I saw a report taken from the wrecked the boardwalk a block from the police station near my high school. Not a big deal until I remembered the boardwalk used to be two blocks away. It was very devastating. Anyway, as our county had a 7PM curfew and we left our dogs at home, we went back home. Again, lights were out. The open  gas station we had passed earlier was now out of gas, but we passed another huge jam at a newly open station on the way home. We spent the evening as we had done the night before: fire, video games and wine.

Day 4. By then we had gotten into somewhat of a routine. Heat up food and water on the grill and begin the rotation of the electrical devices to charge in the cars, running partially on the car battery and partially starting the cars up. Our freezers were now our refrigerators, still cold enough for milk, but not for anything frozen, though the water bottles I had stuck in them before the storm were still pretty solid. One fortunate thing aside from the fireplace; because we have an old water heater that doesn't need electricity, our natural gas fueled hot water heater kept on giving us hot water for showers and baths, which things a little more tolerable as the temperature inside slipped into the 50s. This was the day my son and I went out for supplies, seeing what was open. We had two goals: extra batteries and bread, especially the batteries as we had been running our radio pretty much all the time while we were awake, listening to news, music, talk or sports. We went to the CVS near us, no dice, so we decided to go to our local supermarket, on the other side of 9. With the traffic lights down, the only way to cross 9 was to drive north or south to overpasses to cross over. We started down the road to 9 when, about 1.5 miles from 9, we got stuck in traffic. At the time I thought it was traffic trying to merge onto 9, so I detoured to another intersection and found no traffic. Oh those fools, I thought, they really need to detour. It was after I had looped around and headed back towards that intersection, I saw the reason for the traffic -- the gas station on that corner had reopened for gasoline sales. Yipes. The long gas lines had arrived in my town.

We proceeded to the generated powered supermarket and it was there we received our next taste of a disrupted supply chain. The store was half lit with shelves emptied of non perishable staples. Cashiers were checking receipts with the police keeping watch. When I asked if things were really that bad, they said yes, a little anarchy had apparently returned with some power to the store. One major focal point: the line for the coffee bar which apparently stretched all the way through produce, past all 18 cash registers and to the liquor store at the other end of the store. The line for cheap wine was shorter than for fresh coffee so I resupplied myself with what I needed to get through a few more cold nights with the kids. I also managed to buy 6 bags of ice, bread and some grape jelly.

When we got home, my wife told us the cancer hospital called and they wanted to squeeze her in for chemo that evening. It was then we discovered how bored the kids were when they begged her to take them. So, we all got in  my car for it's last long trip until the gas crisis eased, and drove to the hospital. The route closely paralleled the trip to my brother's. We noted a few more traffic lights working, plus an open WaWa with a long line for gas. The kids were so happy to be someplace with lights, hot prepared food, plugs and cable TV, even if it was tuned only to the news. We were like electric junkies getting our 21st century fix. By time we left, the sun had set and we got a better idea of where there was power and where there wasn't. At that point, there were way more without. Power to the north of us, power to the south, but we were stuck in the middle in the dark with the wine and firewood.

Day 5. Rinse and repeat. Except this time, as we were running out of food that we could easily cook, I made more of an effort to find prepared food and batteries. We got some food at Wegmans, but they were out of batteries. We went back to CVS where we were told that if we come back at 4PM, we could get batteries. When we got back at 4, the new batteries were already gone. Sighing, we drove a bit down the road, where I saw 7-11 was still closed, and then made a right at the next light. Yes light, the traffic light was working. So close! As we were going down the road, I looked to the left at the YMCA we go to and noticed their exterior lights looked to be on. Could it be? Well, yes, if you lived on that side of the road. That night another fire, a dinner warmed on the grill and another bottle of wine.

Day 6. Rinse and repeat, though this time the gym was open, so after 4 days I was able to work out again and watch TV. Almost normal. Later, while doing my now daily supply run, my wife called to tell me a friend on the side of the road with power had invited us over. We brought the food and electronics and enjoyed a day of heat and internet. The end was near. Still, when a landscaper cold called our friends to see if they wanted to pay them to cut up their fallen tree and haul it to the curb, I ran out and asked them to cut about 20 pieces of fireplace sized wood from the tree for me. Another night in front of the fire, reading, listening to the radio and sacrificing another bottle of wine.

Day 7. First day of standard time, though with no clocks to change the time and us rising with the sun anyway, it made little difference to us. When I went outside to place the tea kettle on the grill I noticed how cold it was that morning and thought that this was getting old. I started feeling very depressed, even my wife said this had cured her of the camping bug for a long time. My son was still going away that night with a friend so I dropped him off over there and got some extra Irene wood they had (they had borrowed a generator and were now powering their furnace). When I got home, my wife asked me to take our daughter out for lunch, as she needed the daylight hours to fold the laundry we had done the day before at our friends. First I tried to take her to her favorite casual hamburger place in a shopping center with power, but they weren't opened yet. I then tried to go to a nearby diner, but they had lines out the door. We finally ended up at the mall, which had also gotten power back the previous day. We walked by the many chairs, tables and extension cords around the center of the mall that management had set up for people to recharge and warm up. My daughter and I settled in at Johnny Rockets where, around 2PM, I received the message I had been waiting days to hear -- we have power! Woo hoo!

My mood was elated as my daughter and I walk around the mall. Even though I knew our suffering was nothing compared to those who still be without power as i write this almost a week later, or who lost more than power (one woman I went to high school with lost her Rockaways house, business and father in the days after the hurricane), I was getting mighty down about living in a cold dark house. We got home and I flipped on a light switch for the heck of it. Our long cold, dark nightmare was over. Hellooooo 21st century.

And then, after the cable came back on not long after halftime during the NY Giants loss, I put on the weather channel and saw that a Nor'Easter was forecast. Bring it I thought, after Sandy, this can't be too bad. Oh how I was wrong. I should have had another bottle of wine that night.