Sandy Stories -- Forumite Roll Call!

WetRats

Hey Northeasterners: Check in. Let us know how you (and your comics) weathered the storm!

WetRats

Our prodigal brother, JustBill, reports on Facebook that his comics are floating away.

David_D

WetRats said:

Our prodigal brother, JustBill, reports on Facebook that his comics are floating away.

That's terrible. And a reminder that, even if places like New York City and Atlantic City are dominating the news coverage, there is plenty of damage and misery in Maryland and other places.

WetRats

@David_D: Things OK in your neighborhood? I've heard about some scary stuff in Queens.

WetRats

I guess a bunch of folks are in the dark as well. Please check in as you return to the grid.

LibraryBoy

Lots of wind and rain in my area of Rhode Island, but aside from a few big tree branches down in the yard, we came through it unscathed. Never even lost power, thankfully. I hope everyone who was more in the path than we were came through it okay.

John_Steed

Pretty sure Adam will report about Stone Harbor as soon Sandy's gone for good. The place got pretty flooded. :(

John_Steed

(was the "dislike" aimed at me or Sandy?)

tommysheroes

Checkin in from NYC, couldn't even tell a hurricane happened here. Never lost power, didn't even rain. Other than the fact that I got off work its a fairly standard day.

WetRats

John_Steed said:

(was the "dislike" aimed at me or Sandy?)

Sandy, of course.

David_D

WetRats said:

@David_D: Things OK in your neighborhood? I've heard about some scary stuff in Queens.

We were very lucky-- we are not near the water so we had no flooding, and we didn't lose power or even cable/Internet. The worst affected areas of Queens, as far as I know, were the Far Rockaways were there were widespread fires, as well as the flooded shore line areas. I worry that the other shoe hasn't even dropped yet as far as bad news coming out of the Jersey Shore and other shoreline communities.

I think the lingering effect on NYC will be the flooding of the subway tubes. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a week to weeks before those are back, which will be a big change of life to those of us depending on them. Still, though, nothing to compare to the troubles of flooded or destroyed homes.

KyleMoyer

Got a lot of steady rain and wind but nothing really scary at all. Power dipped a few times. Overall, I count myself lucky and admittedly rather surprised.

Mr_Cosmic

John_Steed said:

Pretty sure Adam will report about Stone Harbor as soon Sandy's gone for good. The place got pretty flooded. :(

Yeah, I did an image search for " stone harbor hurricane sandy" and got some pretty sad pics.

TrustyMutsi

We lost power around midnight and have a few small branches down. Otherwise, we're fine.

fredzilla

Was going to make a joke about living in Colorado but this is too devastating. My family's thoughts and prayers are with those suffering on the east side.

shroud68

Live and work in the Jesey Shore. Atlantic City got hit pretty hard so I'm out of work til the weekend. My house lost power for 36 hours so I played some Risk by candle and flashlight only to get crushed by my youngest daughter. Lost my fence but other than that I got off light.

EdChambers

I live in New Jersey, but I'm on the west coast, right outside of Philadelphia. My immediate area lucked out for the most part. I've seen some down trees and some folks had power outages for a time, but I didn't suffer any major damage. We lost some roof shingles with this storm, but we had already had more serious damage to our house from the tornado that came near us on Sept. 4th, and already have plans for re-roofing and re-siding next week. We have family members closer to the coast who are still without power and still do not have access to their homes. So, I'm thankful for not suffering anything serious.

luke52

There's a lot of these posts I want to dislike. All aimed at the storm of course. Glad to hear nothing too bad has happened. Hoping everyone gets through ok.

DoctorDoom

Staten Island over here. Got the power back two days ago.

Boats all around us, but this particular block made out alright. Hell, we were able to easily fix the fence damage the day after the storm.

Worst thing was the loss of power, but others were far, far worse off than us.

bats00

Matawan, NJ here. Still no power but at least we were lucky and didn't have any damage to our complex. Also very lucky that my fiance and I have friends who do have power who were willing to take us and the pets (one turtle and one dog) in. At least now we have light and heat!

NickSD

I'm an amateur, mostly unknown, comic creator here in Lower Manhattan where we had no power for nearly six days (though my neighborhood wasn't in a flood zone, and didn't even get much rain, so my wife and I weren't "storm victims" as much as a 1950s power grid victims). But I'm dependent on a ventilator to breathe, and the ventilator is electricity dependent, so that was an immediate problem.

Luckily, we did pull through ok, thanks to an amazing outpouring of support. I was very surprised, especially at the large number of people who volunteered, many of whom had never heard of me prior to this.
People were so amazing during the blackout crisis. Just going to incredible lengths, biking across the brooklyn bridge with car batteries, huffing up 12 flights of stairs with recharged ventilator batteries every 3 hours, cannibalizing cars for their batteries, even helping out directly with my hands on care. The best people ever coming here, keeping me going on batteries for almost 6 days despite our neighborhood being dark and abandoned like a scene from I Am Legend or The Stand, keeping me going despite very steep and difficult stairs, keeping me going so my life and all I want to do can continue.

The media picked up on our story.

Here is a link to our NPR interview: Sandy Especially Tough On Vulnerable Populations

Audio interview by Crystal in Boston, who drove down to help us: Hurricane Sandy Knocks Out A Disabled Man’s Breathing Machine And A Heartwarming Journey To Save Him Unfolds

Crystal has mitochondrial disease like me, and uses a wheelchair (though not yet a ventilator). Her blogs document the extraordinary story of bringing me batteries better than the media could. Boing-boing picked up on her writing: http://boingboing.net/2012/11/02/helping-to-get-deep-cycle-batt.html

Before I moved to NYC in 2008 (thinking the northeast wouldn't have super storms) I lived on the gulf coast—Mobile, Alabama—where I survived direct hits from Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. I knew first hand the best ways to cope, for me, but Sandy hit when I'm much older than I used to be. The power has been back for almost 17 days, but it's taken me until now to really regain my balance and get back to a semi-normal routine of writing and drawing again. Maybe this story will be a good comic.

Thought y'all might be interested in this very different perspective. When I heard the CGS guys in the newest Pulp episode mention the writer of the Shadow being on a ventilator too, I thought I'd go ahead and post this.

Nick