Can’t believe it’s been 10 years.
OT: Superstorm Sandy 10 years later
- Thread starter Plum Street
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Left the house the 28th. Little did I know I wouldn't be back in till mid May and I was luckier than many.
You can see videos and pictures but unless you were on the ground you'd never understand the destruction.
You can see videos and pictures but unless you were on the ground you'd never understand the destruction.
That is something I will never forget, as Sandy hit right in the middle of Tyler's 2nd heavy chemo cycle. I know I was monitoring it days before it hit, and I had help from this board in planning contingencies if we couldn't get him to Sloan Kettering if he needed to be put in isolation.
Here's a time lapse of its track:
Here's a time lapse of its track:
Monday, October 29th. Will never forget it. I think I had a unique view of the storm and the aftermath. I can talk about it for hours and hours. It was the first year being in the big chair of my town. I was driving around with our police director in the early afternoon. The wind was very bad, tons of stuff already down, but not catastrophic. Around 2:30pm'ish, we were in the mountain section of town and it was like a switch was flipped. All f'ing hell broke loose. Driving down the mountain, we passed right under a transformer that blew.....never heard a louder sound in my life.
Barely made it back to town hall (which was very close to my home). We are not a shore town and didn't have to deal with a surge or rain, but our town was smashed. Literally smashed. 95% out of power. 44 roads were blocked. Large sections of town were inaccessible. And of course, one of our residents was in an ambulance going into labor!!!!!
That Tuesday started the most overwhelming, challenging, and inspiring two weeks of my life.
My then-future wife was living in Flemington and had the same experience.
As a shore resident I could not believe how the damage was so terrible. What was weird was one house would be totally destroyed and the next virtually untouched. Lost power in my house for a week and two weeks at my office.
My other vivid memory was at the Rutgers game the Saturday before and we all saw a sun dog which proved to be a bad omen for what was to come a day later.
One other memory was Anderson Cooper was broadcasting from Asbury Park where I was living at the time. Our last view of him was he was running from a giant wave. My power goes out just as the wave hits. Did not know if he made it until the power came back on. Like others said I could talk about this all day as there were so many other memories and experiences I had that I never want to see or go through again.
My other vivid memory was at the Rutgers game the Saturday before and we all saw a sun dog which proved to be a bad omen for what was to come a day later.
One other memory was Anderson Cooper was broadcasting from Asbury Park where I was living at the time. Our last view of him was he was running from a giant wave. My power goes out just as the wave hits. Did not know if he made it until the power came back on. Like others said I could talk about this all day as there were so many other memories and experiences I had that I never want to see or go through again.
Irene was very bad and very bad for people’s basements in certain areas. To use a football analogy : It kind of gets forgotten about due to Sandy being 14 months later . Kinda like the giants 1990 NfC championship game against the great 49ers team . Forgotten about because of the great win over the Norwood Bills.
There was also that really bad October snow storm in 2011 , but rutgers fans remember that because of WVU game.
All terrible storms for us
In my area, Irene was a rain/water event, Sandy was a wind event. Even Manville didn't flood with Sandy.
Too many leaves still on the trees when that October 2011 snow hit, made everything much worse. Irene was more of rain event than Sandy causing a ton of river flooding throughout the state.
But so many trees went down during Sandy. They both caused their own unique havoc. I remember being at the hospital Sunday-Wednesday for Sandy. Was allowed to go home Wednesday and trying to drive home was an adventure. Still pitch black outside and all the normal ways you remember to go home were blocked by down trees or wires.
Stayed home for Sandy thinking it was going to be another Irene. I remember watching the water lapping at the doorstep with another 4 hours to go before high tide thinking we are really f*cked. Magically the wind stopped and shifted and the water never went any higher. We were just a little south of where it made landfall so the direction of the wind and storm surge was negative compared to everything north of it. We were very lucky that we only had minor flooding in the crawlspace. The positive of staying is that no one was allowed on the island for days, so if you left, you could not come back. I had a contractor under the house the next day ripping out all the insulation and replacing the ductwork, so most of the work and cleanup was done before anyone was allowed back in town. I remember seeing homes on the beach just filled with sand and the streets loaded up with debris. A friend of mine owns Sea Isle Ice Co and he said he lost so many of those freezer boxes that sit outside the stores holding the bags of ice. I guess they just floated away to somewhere. My daughter had a Nissan Sentra with about 180K miles on it that died 2 days prior, had to be junked. While it was sitting in the driveway the metal chimney cap from my house blew off and landed on the windshield smashing it. It was the gods saying the car is done, make it so.
If given the choice i would probably stay again, but wife, no way. As scary as it was I liked the concept of knowing what was happening with the house.
If given the choice i would probably stay again, but wife, no way. As scary as it was I liked the concept of knowing what was happening with the house.
That's consistent with my wife's experience. Irene brought a flooded basement, while Sandy broke a window frame.
Wasn't that 2011 storm Halloween and the Eric LeGrand return game? I was leaving to go to the game with my daughter and my wife asked me if I was insane. I decided to stay home and glad I did. Our town was shut down and without power for a few days.
I completely disagree. Im across the street from Cranford in Clark. I’m also 64 and Sandy was by far the most intense storm I’ve lived through. You probably got flooded in Irene due to intense rainfall, Sandy didn’t produce a lot of rain. As a wind event it was on another level. The amount of trees knocked down , damage and overall disruption was the worst by any measure that I’ve been through.
Yes that was the LeGrand game that we honored him by losing to Geno Smith . I am still pissed about that . But I think @kyk1827 hit geno with a snowball or something
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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Drilled him and also the mountaineer mascot pregame
My daughters first two halloweens- snow storm and Sandy. Happy to see nothing crazy scheduled for this one
We were still in Virginia, and I was planning on going up right up until late afternoon on Friday. Just kept watching the weather and watching the weather, finally decided it would be too foolish of a risk to drive up from VA overnight to NNJ, then drive down to the game in the morning.
After they turned the power back on 3 houses caught fire on my street, 2 were total losses.
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My sister’s house was in the smoldering row of debris on the far left. Bay side is at the top of the picture and ocean side at the bottom.
We have two friends who had bungalows at Camp Osborne.(tough to call them houses they were so tiny), Anyway, there was such in fighting by the board on what to do, they both sold and got out. Only now are they starting to rebuild. And by rebuild, I mean they put in asphalt streets, that's it so far.
That was a great place, no one bothered you on that beach. Me and my buddy started a drunken impromptu fire one night. Next thing you know the two of us became a party of 40 complete with live music. People all down the beach were drawn to it like bugs to a bug zapper.
They were tiny but my BIL was a carpenter and totally renovated it and put on a second story and it was about 100 feet from the beach. It was a tight knit community.
No, the land was owned by the Osborne family. He would rent out parcels for a tent colony in the summers in the 20's. Thus, Camp Osborne, in the 20's pretty much nothing else was there.
I'm sure you did plenty in your role to help people in your town, which is great. Just wish you'd apply that approach here, but unfortunately, you downplayed Sandy (like every other weather threat) right up until it was obvious it wasn't going to miss.
I was posting about Sandy for over a week here and elsewhere (still have all my FB posts and emails on the storm) and once we were within 3 days of landfall, I implored people who lived anywhere near the coast to gather up their valuables and get the hell out of Dodge, as it was obvious this was going to shatter storm surge records north of landfall (which ended up being in Brigantine, which is why coastal towns south of there escaped serious storm surges) and result in incredible levels of downed trees/wires/power outages inland. Fortunately, the rainfall underperformed so flooding north of about 195 was minimal - and in case people don't remember, parts of WV/MD/PA got 1-2 feet of snow on the western side of this enormous hybrid system. Might need to copy one of those old posts to this thread...
Most of my weather threads aren't that serious, but this one was, since it was clear this was a life-threatening event for many. It was really nice to get so much positive feedback on my posts here and elsewhere, especially from people who actually changed their minds about evacuating and saved precious valuables and avoided potential serious risks.
The day of the storm was surreal. I went down to Sea Bright with my son early in the morning, just to see the approaching storm and waves and it was already impressive and then, like most of us inland, spent that afternoon/evening just hoping to not have our trees come down on our house (we got lucky - just branches). The next day it looked like a bomb had gone off. We lost power, but were ok, so I tried to get into work around 9 am and it took me an hour to get to Rahway, 9 miles away, as there were just so many trees down blocking roads and Route 1 had no working lights, so everyone was driving slowly (not that many people really).
I went in because I was one of the leaders of Merck's Site Emergency Response Team (since I was head of our largest chemical pilot plant back then) and there was a ton to do to try to get the site functioning, especially as power was out and every building didn't have generator backup - which was a real issue for many of the labs, especially with regard to thousands of precious saved/frozen samples that could have been lost if we didn't find ways to get temporary power back (we did). We also had had an "explosion" of sorts at one of our liquid nitrogen distribution networks, due to failure scenarios we had never designed for, which led to the liquid nitrogen warming up and vaporizing in several sections of stainless steel piping, which became embrittled and everntually blew apart from the unexepcted high pressure of the now gaseous N2. This occurred minutes before I got to the site and two operators just missed being killed or maimed by the metal shrapnel, which travelled a few hundred feet. As one might guess, that kept us busy for awhile, too. Was simply a crazy couple of days for our site (and me), which remained closed for a week, iirc.
On the home front, my wife volunteered for days with collecting food, clothing, and supplies from people in town and distributing them mostly to folks down the Shore. But after 5 days without power, we had kind of had enough, so we drove down to Philly, since we had tickets to see a punk/folk band (new music thread, lol?), Andrew Jackson Jihad - and we decided to stay in Philly for a couple of nights and luckily our power came back on 2 days later. And then a week later, most of CNJ/NNJ got hammered with 4-8" of heavy wet snow that caused some more power outages - think it was the only time I recall referring to a snowy solution as having a downside, as we just didn't need more of that at that time.
I went on an already planned trip to Disney World with my family immediately it happened.
At the airport the TSA person when she saw my ID..."Are they really letting you leave?" "Honey, there are 12,000 of me left, I think the City will be OK."
Power out before we left and was told by my neighbors it came back on right when we landed on the return trip. So we luckily came home to a cold refrigerator and a warm house and with the lights on. A little leak from the roof and that was about it. Very lucky.
At the airport the TSA person when she saw my ID..."Are they really letting you leave?" "Honey, there are 12,000 of me left, I think the City will be OK."
Power out before we left and was told by my neighbors it came back on right when we landed on the return trip. So we luckily came home to a cold refrigerator and a warm house and with the lights on. A little leak from the roof and that was about it. Very lucky.
I was in the next town over. Was without power for over a week. I can remember all the folks in the Clark Target and the Westfield Starbucks trying to get their phones charged so they can communicate with friends and family.
I remember checking on a high school friends parents after she posed on Facebook that she could not contact her parents.
I surveyed some of the buildings in the south seaport area that we’re trying to get there electric switchgear re-certified so they could get power back on. The devastation was incredible. It felt like a war zone. Temp generator and boilers littering the steets. Something I will never forget.
Great vacation planning! :)
We were out of power from Monday evening to Saturday night. Two crazy things we experienced were:
1. How little PSEG actually knew about their circuits and grid. PSEG had little info on neighborhoods or on what connected to what. They didn't know what developments had underground power, which means, fix the feeder lines and you will light up hundreds of homes. We met with PSEG reps 3-4 times a day and partnered with them. I know for a fact that other local towns just yelled at them, which is bad crisis management. There will be a time and place for determining blame, but at this moment, we had the same goal in mind. Light up as many houses as quickly as possible. We pointed out all the neighborhoods with underground power and gave them our utility maps. Fix these 2 feeder lines and you will light up 1200 houses in north Belle Mead. This worked well and why we recovered a lot quicker than other local towns. On that Friday, we had over 20 PSEG work crews in town where Princeton and Hillsborough only had a few each. Why? They knew our info was actionable. On Monday, we had 95% of homes/stores out of power. By Sunday, we had 95% of them back up.
2. After the storm, a bunch of people died throughout the state due to CO poisoning. This was because of improper portable generator usage. This was our biggest fear in town. Myself, our police director, and 6 officers broke up into 4 teams to canvas and inspect the entire town. We found 22 dangerous uses of generators with 6 in garages and believe it or not 6 in freaking houses! I remember one house I inspected. I heard the generator but couldn't find it. It was in the second floor kitchen (split-level) on the sink next to an open window. I freaked out on the resident who claimed to have done it because of the lack of extension cords. LOL! The police director was able to get more cords and we made the guy set it up outside. That family had 2 small children. That was scary. God bless, we had no deaths or serious injuries.
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We (in Washington Township, Gloucester County) collected a ton of supplies, and on Friday I trucked them town to the relief center in the Atlantic City Convention Center. I ended up staying the whole weekend helping with distribution, because they were short-handed. That was the beginning of my affinity towards Atlantic City. A few years later I was a resident, with a boardwalk business (kept the TWP house as well, though).
My son was at Rutgers at the time. He wanted to come home, but his car was under a tree, so I took time out to go get him. It was an unforgettable ride. All the highways were dark, and 99.9 % of the traffic was utility trucks from far-off places. New Brunswick was black as the Pine Barrens. So eerie. I've never seen an urban setting so dark before. Luckily I knew where going; he lived near where the grease trucks parked (I think he was on Hamilton St.?).
A month later, on a trip to Sussex County, it was clear to me that except for the coast, North Jersey had been devastated beyond anything we saw in South Jersey...
My son was at Rutgers at the time. He wanted to come home, but his car was under a tree, so I took time out to go get him. It was an unforgettable ride. All the highways were dark, and 99.9 % of the traffic was utility trucks from far-off places. New Brunswick was black as the Pine Barrens. So eerie. I've never seen an urban setting so dark before. Luckily I knew where going; he lived near where the grease trucks parked (I think he was on Hamilton St.?).
A month later, on a trip to Sussex County, it was clear to me that except for the coast, North Jersey had been devastated beyond anything we saw in South Jersey...
The worst part for me was the couple days not knowing if my home was still standing. Finally got word from a friend who had a friend who worked for the town that it was still there. Other than garage doors there was little exterior damage. When we were finally allowed to check on our homes, inside was a different story. The water had risen as high as 5' on the 1st floor.
I never went in.
Went to Belmar, since it was closer, to check it out the next day but not Manasquan.
Felt it was not my place to be there. I remembered how I felt about some of the “tourists” right at the Site after 9/11 and didn’t want to be one of those in Squan.
The following Spring my boys (12 and 9 at the time) had club lacrosse game down in Lacey and we decided to go back via 35 (Seaside and north) instead of the Parkway just to see…my boys got so upset at what they saw and so sad for those affected that they made us get on the Parkway instead.
No one could go over the bridges, even homeowners, for some time. Even when they allowed you in you needed a pass issued by the town to get thru the checkpoints.
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