Aftermath, Clean Up, and Future After Hurricane Sandy

James Franklin was not joking when he responded to Hurricane Sandy: “We’ve never had such a challenging scenario.”  Franklin, the Branch Chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit, was able to determine from days ahead that the combination of warm and cold fronts that composed the super-storm would result in disastrous effects on New York. And then it hit. And he was right.


When Hurricane Sandy hit the shores of the tri-state area on Oct. 29 at 8 PM, the effects were indeed destructive. Overwhelming amounts of water that came in waves of 14 feet, along with winds that gusted up to 89 miles per hour flooded houses, filled subway stations, tossed cars around, destroyed bridges and tunnels, and ripped buildings apart.  They also drowned citizens who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, electrocuted even more victims through a bad combination of water and power lines. Worst of all, they crushed the spirits of the 375,000 people that were dislocated from Hurricane Sandy in New York City alone.1

And that was just day 1. The hundreds of thousands of people that were dislocated returned to find no power and no clean water in their homes — for weeks to come. Infrastructure seemed to become nonexistent: channels of water that formed on land caused towns to segment into little pieces, and parts of places like the Jersey Shore, Staten Island, Coney Island, Long Island, and the Rockaways had to be sealed off because of the rampant fires and the damage that occurred.

Soon after the storm subsided, President Barack Obama, then up for reelection, promised immediate and necessary aid for relief.2 Relief included helping residents fix the conditions of their homes so that they could return to their neighborhoods after having to live in schools that served as shelters. New York City formed the Build it Back program, which is still helping residents fix their homes so that they can return.

The New York City Transit System required the most work out of New York’s infrastructure. 15,000 gallons of seawater were pumped into the transportation relic.3 Subway stations were flooded — well into several months after the disaster hit. Although trains were up and running within a week, certain trains had to alter routes or bypass stations to make ends meet. The trains are almost back to how they used to be a year before the disaster, which indicates that some work is still left.

As for other aspects of the city’s infrastructure, NYC Transit employees have spent, in total, 2.3 million hours of recovery, installed 100 miles of new electrical cables, and repaired 46,000 miles of track for railroads and subway systems.1

All in all, more than 60 million people were affected by Hurricane Sandy from Haiti to Maine, and $65 billion worth of destruction was imposed upon the east coast of the United States. Citizens are taking measures to ensure that such a disaster, if it may ever occur again, will not leave as big of a print. This includes the fortification of the shores of Staten Island, Coney Island, and the Rockaway peninsula. Furthermore, the city plans to build edifices, create transportation, and use electrical infrastructures that can withstand natural disasters, especially flooding from water.Most importantly, the city is preparing its citizens by educating them. Resources, such as pamphlets, are being created to instruct residents on how to properly deal with certain conditions, so that they may secure their lives.

Endnotes

[1] Verena Dobnik, Hurricane Sandy Subway, Huffington Post

[2] Barack Obama, An Ongoing Response to Hurricane Sandy, whitehouse.gov

[3] Ginger Adams Otis,  Hurricane Sandy, one year later: Tracing the superstorm’s path from inception to destruction, Daily News