Sandy Aftermath...

So Sandy has been and more or less gone and now New York (and all the other states that's she's been through) are left to tidy up after her.

Watching the news it looks absolutely horrific in some areas - all last night there were new reports of flooding, the subways were under 11 feet of water, the tunnels out of Manhattan had even more, Battery Park was under a couple of feet of water and half of Manhattan have been without power for nearly 24 hours now.

There were worse cases too, the entire New Jersey boardwalk has gone, it's been engulfed in sand, as have many of the houses on that part of the coast, the majority of Atlantic City was under water and part of the boardwalk there had floated away. 

In an area called Breezy Point - a lovely seaside town out near Long Island - was not only flooded but suffered a tragic fire that resulted in 80-100 houses burning down. That's an entire neighbourhood who have lost everything.

There are still millions and millions of people without any power, and it looks like there won't be any power for the next few days for those people. A lot of the power went out in lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn after a power station exploded! I was looking outside at one point and saw some blue flashes in the sky, I had assumed it was lightning but now I know it was flashes from the power station.

Every single news channel has been covering the Sandy story for the last couple of days - it's supposedly the worst, or most expensive natural disaster in American history.

Watching the news and hearing all the stories has made Abi and I realise just how lucky we were last night not to have been effected by any of the disastrous events. We're dry and safe, we still have power and gas and internet, all the buildings around us are untouched and luckily there was very minor damage along Myrtle Avenue.

I went for a walk this morning to the supermarket and only saw a few traces of Sandy...

 Despite not having any serious signs of Sandy in our area last night or this morning, it has been a very intense couple of days. We've had the news on a lot throughout the last 48 hours and hearing all the reports come in about mandatory evacuations, subways shutting down, all other mass transit stopping, curfews, bridges and tunnels closing etc. It was all very dramatic and quite draining.

I feel a bit silly saying that watching the news was draining, when I know there are people out there who have suffered emensly from the storms, some people have even lost family members to Sandy. I can't begin to imagine how those people must be feeling, the people who have had their possessions ruined or the people who no longer have a house to call home. It's just awful.

Hopefully New York and the rest of the East Coast can pick itself up, dust itself off and get back to normal (or better) very soon. From what I've seen of New York over these past three and a bit years, I have a feeling it'll just shrug Sandy off, get back to work and be joking about the whole thing in a few weeks.

I hope so anyway.