Powerless

Emigration Diary: Powerless

Posted November 7, 2012 by Jenny Foxe in Ramp Specials

I was all set with a post describing how our Hallowe’en celebrations were going last week. I was aware of the impending Frankenstorm being whipped up at sea and the damage it had done in the Caribbean but having been here through quite a few media-frenzied storm watches that came to not much more than a bit of wind and rain, I wasn’t too concerned.
When we learned it was highly likely that there would be power outages on Long Island, we did thankfully take some precautions. We filled the cars up with gas and got in some camping gas, non-perishable food and plenty of batteries and flashlights. Our water is pumped from a well and requires power to run so we filled the baths up with water, just in case. We had notification that school was to be closed on Monday and Tuesday.
At about 2pm the curiosity got the better of us and we headed to a nearby beach to look at the waves. We were expecting Sandy to hit at about 8pm. We are on the North Shore of Long Island so this was not as dangerous as it sounds. The only real risk we were taking was that we could be hit by a falling tree. The storm surge on this side of the island wasn’t expected until about 10pm. In the village they had boarded up windows and lined their doorways with sandbags. It was a full moon so the tide was to be very high and the village regularly suffers from flash flooding anyway. What we saw from the beach was scary. At low tide, the waves were already about 8 feet high, the water was crashing against houses in Asharoken. At Crab Meadow beach there was so much sand being blasted by the wind that a second or two outside the car was the most efficient exfoliation treatment I’ve ever experienced. The playground fence waved in the air like a ribbon. A little subdued by the power Mother Nature was exhibiting, we went home to safety.

It was George’s birthday and as he is not a lover of birthday cake I had been soaking raisins in tea to make a brack. I mixed up the rest of the ingredients and preheated the oven. The power flickered. I sighed and reset the oven. It flickered again. The kids came upstairs, indignant that there was something wrong with the TV. The cable was resetting when it went off again. This time it stayed off for a few minutes. We looked around for candles. The power came back for another minute then went off and stayed off. I wrapped up the brack mixture and figured I could bake it the next day. Meanwhile, it was getting pretty windy.
We stepped outside to try to charge phones in the car. The sky flickered an eerie blue colour. It wasn’t quite like lightning; we wondered if it was power lines or substations. High above us the oak and chestnut trees swayed like daffodils in the breeze. Where we stood was sheltered. I heard an ominous creak from a neighbour’s tree and we went back inside. George set up the camping stove in the garage and steamed some mussels I’d had in the freezer and made some fried garlic bread. We had thought to get wine and beer in. With the open fire lit, good food and the weather staying outside it was actually a rather pleasant evening.
On Tuesday, I went out to get some last minute supplies for the Hallowe’en party I was to host in the 2nd Grade classroom. Still without power, I hadn’t seen or heard any news. This is America though, right? Of course Party City was going to be open. It was the day before Hallowe’en, their busiest day of the year. All the traffic lights were out. One of the scariest things I’ve ever done was to turn left onto a dual carriageway with no traffic lights. On the radio it said to treat broken traffic lights like a four way stop sign. I seemed to be the only one doing this.
Party City was closed. So was nearly everywhere else. I walked into a grocery store that was lit by one light, the frozen aisles taped off and the lone teller adding up bills with a calculator. I bought some Hallowe’en candy and activity books for the kids. The extent of the damage began to become clear to me as I passed hundreds of uprooted trees, lying across electricity cables or resting on people’s roofs. We were lucky, our garden was just ankle-deep in leaves and twigs. We raked up 20 bags. George cut down a few broken branches and dead trees. All around the buzzing of chainsaws could be heard.

We heard that the village still had power and hadn’t suffered too much damage. The water had apparently come up and gone back down, flooding only as much as it ever had. Restaurants were open and very busy. After some barbecued salmon, we walked down with all the phones and chargers. We were welcomed by notices like this:

Wednesday was Hallowe’en. Northport village usually does what they call Safe Hallowe’en where the local shops and small businesses give out candy to costumed kids in broad daylight. I had thought the fact that it wasn’t considered safe for children to go trick or treating in their own neighbourhood kind of sad but this year it was absolutely not safe. Downed wires dangled everywhere. I walked down with Thor and Captain Hook and they collected quite a bit of booty. George took them around the immediate neighbourhood afterwards and they got even more.
As the week ended, the temperature started to drop. We got warnings of snow. Shops sold out of batteries. Gas stations sold out of gas. We lined up for ages to get tables in restaurants. Boiling water on the camping stove to wash dishes or ourselves became tedious. Constantly filling the cistern from the bathwater with a bucket was a pain. Desperately trying to conserve phone charge but still searching Twitter for information and updates was stressful. I had a constant feeling of living in the dark.
There were some highlights of course. George began putting granite rocks in the fire which we would wrap in a towel to warm our bed. I grew quite fond of my pet rock. We ate extremely well, lots of restaurant food and barbecues. The restaurant I work in was so busy I got extra shifts and lots of tips. As I stacked firewood with my kids I realised people rent logcabins to pay for these experiences.
Watching the news today, now that we’ve finally got our power back, I realise how lucky we were. We sustained no damage or injuries and we had the facilities to stay warm and well fed. We may have been 148 hours without power or running water but we always had somewhere safe and dry to live. It was an inconvenience not a disaster.
It’s not completely over yet. School remains closed for another few days as there are no safe routes for school buses. Queues for gas still extend for miles. Outside every home there are bags of leaves and chopped branches as people attempt to clean up and return to normality. Slowly, public transport is beginning to run to schedule and people are returning to work. I see that for thousands of people not very far away that this is not yet the case. Some people’s houses are ruined, some people’s livelihoods, some lost family and friends. Many remain in shelters requiring food and blankets. Snow is still forecast and thousands are still without heat. It will take a lot more time and help for some to recover. I never would have thought this kind of thing could happen in New York, the city that never sleeps. It was brought to a complete standstill for almost a week. Sandy was a stark reminder of how vulnerable we really are and I never again will take a hot shower for granted.