Now Sandy was about a month ago. And now seems the perfect time to reflect on what happened to me.

I live on Long Island. All of Long Island was affected differently. I was fortunate enough to be in an area that was hit hard, but not devastated. Devastated, what a word, but there isn’t one powerful enough to describe what happened to some families. Sandy was the real deal.

Now back to my story. Before she hit, she was on every news station. Everyone and their brother was covering the ‘Frankenstorm on the east coast.’ They made her sound bad, like they always do with storms like this. I figured it was a strategy to get more viewers to their channel. Being that hurricanes don’t hit Long Island very often, and the ones that have (or at least the ones that I was alive to experience) haven’t been too bad. Here I was thinking that Sandy would show up to my front door, huff and puff and try to blow my house down, then run away with her tail between her legs to try her luck on another town.

I was wrong.

Welcome to my front yard and the cause of my outage.

The power went out the night of the storm. Even though I was getting ready to go to bed, it was a wake-up call. Maybe this storm is going to be a tad worse than expected… Nah, I bet we’ll get power back tomorrow. Guess I’ll just have to tough it out until then.

I got power back on Day 13 after the storm.

Now, during my freshman orientation for Baruch, I was let in on a little insider information: like my high school, Baruch tends not to close too often. If the subways are down and the weather is exceptionally bad, then the school may decide to shut down for a day. But essentially, don’t get your hopes up because it rarely happens.

School was cancelled for a week.

So let’s get this straight. School was closed for a whole week, and I had no power for 13 days after the storm. Which obviously means that I had no power during the time school was closed. What did I do you ask? Well, besides the cold showers, morgue showers (I worked in a hospital, and when it got power, I went to the morgue and used the shower that they had in it), lack of internet, no electronic devices, no cell phone signal, no freezer, spoiled meats, gas lines, no ice, barbequed foods each night, nothing in grocery stores, trees down, power lines lying lifeless in the street, and lots and lots of darkness; something pretty profound happened to me.

I picked up a book. ‘Wait, you picked up a book, who cares…?’ Well let me explain.

I never read books. Never. A teacher would assign one, and I’d look up the summary. I hated reading and reading hated me, we had a mutual relationship. So why did I pick up a book in the first place? Frankly, I was bored. Boredom like you wouldn’t believe. So I went to my basement, picked out a nice 600 page Stephen King book and got crackin’. Bag of Bones was the title and I couldn’t put the damn thing down. It was the most interesting experience of my life. I loved reading it. Now I don’t love many things, but ‘reading that book’ made the list. The story, the characters, the horror, It was amazing and I was hooked.

This overweight fella changed my life.

I’ve read three other Stephen King books after the incident. I can’t stop. I don’t plan on stopping either.

I’ve filled a little void in my life and, despite everything, I thank Sandy for this.

The day before tragedy struck, I went home so I could attend a NY Jets vs. Miami Dolphins football game with my family Sunday afternoon.  After the game, my parents broke the news to me that I could not go back to my dorm room, and I would be spending at least Monday at home.  With that said, we spent the entire Sunday evening preparing for the storm: shopping for food and waiting in line for gas.

When Sandy began, I remember seeing my friends from all over posting on the Internet, from their smart phones, how they had lost power.  My neighborhood was one of the lucky ones.  We lost power around 9:30 PM and most of us didn’t regain it until Thursday night, or Friday morning.  During our time in the darkness, my friends and I did anything to occupy us.  For two days we played hours of pick-up basketball in the street, followed by countless games of Monopoly.  It seemed as though once seven o’clock struck, the day was over because the sky turned pitch black.

What irked me was seeing the devastation that my borough had experienced.  I remember driving around with my dad the morning after to look at the damage in my neighborhood by the water.  It was devastating.  Trees were down.  Boats were in the middle of streets.  Homes were flooded, and some were even uprooted by the massive 15-foot waves.  My dad and I got out of the car at his friend’s house, which faces the water of Staten Island, to make sure that him and his family were OK.  Although they were OK, next door there used to be a pub.  Now, the bar was on the ground completely crushed, and the owner stared desolately at his property.

The devastation that hit the bar

Boats washed up into the streets

Unfortunately, my college did a poor job of informing us when we would officially return to school because they did not know when they would restore power.  I had to go back to my dorm, just in case I had class the following day.  Late Wednesday evening, I returned thinking there would be school the next day; It turns out, there was no school.  This bothered me greatly because I could have been home with my friends helping out clean up the homes of people in our neighborhoods.

Just before midnight on Wednesday, a friend informed me that she would be heading out to Long Island Thursday morning to volunteer with the Red Cross.  I figured if I could not help the people of Staten Island, I might as well help out my fellow New Yorkers.  I spent the day giving out lunch and dinner to those who lost their home and everything inside of it.  Listening to some of their stories makes you truly grateful for everything that you have in your life.

Still, as I sit here writing my “Sandy story,” something does not feel right.  Here I am at school, going about my business as if nothing has happened.  In reality, my home, Staten Island, is in ruins.  Those people need help, and unfortunately for quite some time Staten Island was “forgotten.”  People always joke and kid about how Staten Island is the forgotten borough, but it’s actually true.  If there was no outcry from the people of Staten Island, there was a good possibility that these people would still be neglected.

It’s sad to say, but I have heard multiple stories of people I knew whose houses were flooded, damaged, or even destroyed.  An alumnus from my high school track team, who is also an army veteran, rounded up a bunch of his friends the days following the storm.  They called themselves the “Brown Cross” because they knew they were going to have to get their hands dirty to help out.  This group, which started out as a small circle of eight friends, has grown to over 100+ volunteers including many of my fellow teammates from my high school track team.  Although the rebuilding process may take weeks, or even months, for some, I look forward to going home and helping these guys out on the front line.

The Brown Cross in action (Photo Credit: NY Times Website)

While Sandy had little to no effect on many people, it devastated others.  A tragic event like this allowed me to evaluate life and put a lot of things into perspective.  My family was fortunate enough to only lose power for a few days.  I feel as though I owe it to Staten Island to do whatever I can to help speed up this recovery process.  But most importantly, I learned that we should appreciate everything we have because the next day it could all be taken from us.

One of my friends stumbled upon this during the clean-up. (Photo Credit: Liam Vogt, fellow Sea Track alumnus ’12)

After preparing for the storm by shopping and doing laundry, I felt I was prepared for Hurricane Sandy. I had a bag packed with a flashlight, clothes, drinks and food in case I needed to be evacuated from my dorm. I heard that subways were shutting down at 7 PM Sunday night in preparation for Sandy, so once it hit seven, everything for me got tenser. It was already dark and windy, but the rain had not come yet.

We had heard earlier that day that we were not going to have class on Monday, so I was doing a little work to get ahead, but mostly procrastinating when the storm started to hit. Even through the music in my headphones, sixteen floors up from the ground and I could still hear the wind whipping outside and the rain falling hard. My windows were shaking and cold and I was afraid they would break. I moved my printer away from the window in case the worst happened.

Occasionally I walked away from my computer to the window to look outside. The streetlights were dim, but I could see the trees shaking and garbage blowing around. There were still leaves on the tree outside. There were no people and no cars going around, an odd moment for the streets of NYC. I heard terrible stories of how First Avenue was flooded, how bad downtown looked, and how downtown had lost power. I watched the storm for minutes at a time throughout the night, going back to my computer between intervals, until I went to bed.

The next morning I woke up and it was still dark and cloudy. The rain had stopped, but that tree from last night had no more leaves. I was surprised it was even standing. In the aftermath of the storm, I saw pictures of my high school, Stuyvesant, with water up to the wall I used to sit on. It was at least four feet off the ground too, not a short wall. Seeing the subways flooded and all the wreckage in Staten Island and Queens made me realize what a terrible disaster had occurred.

From the Upper East Side, I didn’t get to see first hand the true ruins of Sandy. Only in pictures could I see the boats washed ashore in Staten Island, or the houses blown away in Queens. The rest of the city wasn’t so lucky. My friend from Chinatown came up to my dorm just to use power to charge his phone and check his college applications. The trip that usually took him 40 minutes took him 3 hours. I was one of the lucky ones and don’t have first hand photos of destruction to show. I wasn’t too affected; I still have power and Internet. My family in Queens was lucky too and I’m thankful for that. But for my family and I, we know others were much less fortunate than us and we hope to help out the best we can.

It is amazing how our society is entirely rooted on technology that requires the constant influx of electricity. I did not realize how vital electricity was until hurricane sandy hit. In a blink of an eye, my lights turned off. Television, computers, microwaves, and my alarm clock all became obsolete.

I walked around my house to access the powerless appliances lying around my house. Pacing back and forth, I was hoping that it would only be a sudden power outage. Five minutes passed and nothing came back. I decided to take nap thinking maybe after an hour or two it would be back. After two hours, the power was still out. I was not prepared for this.

However, my parents were prepared and had bought candles, flashlights and food. Things became interesting when I became bored. Sitting around with nothing to do, I realized that in the past there was not any electricity. Without electricity, we were essentially sent back to a time when things were simpler.

I quickly realized that our society is incredibly fast paced and information if constantly being spread. Everything changed on this one night. For the first time, I did not feel that 24 hours was too little time in a day. I used my time to talk with my parents and sleep. I felt relaxed and free of stress as I felt like I had all the time in the world.

Looking outside of my house, the neighborhood was pitch black. Cars were nowhere to be seen. It truly felt like my neighborhood had been sent back to a simpler time.