Sandy 2012 Aftermath-Northern NJ - Photo Journal
I did not take pictures right after the storm when the real devastation was evident. My camera batteries were dead and we had no power. These pictures were taken November 11th 2012, fourteen days after the storm hit and we still had no power. This is our neighbor's yard where a giant pine tree broke in half and fell into his fence.
You can see more after the jump.
Despite having a generator, with 14 days without power and running the generator conservatively due the the gas shortage (we plugged in the fridge for about 3-4 hours a day) we still lost all our perishable food.
This is what made having no power for 14 days bearable: A 6000 watt generator that my wonderful parents gave to us when they moved to Florida. Hardware stores in the area sold out of generators after four days. Every one of our neighbors had one running. Most ran theirs 24/7. We could not afford that much gas nor wanted to wait daily in gas lines so we ran ours about 5-10 hours a day to have TV for my son and to turn on computers to keep in touch with loved ones.
Our neighborhood sounded like a lawn mover race with constant engines droning on, even through the night. One neighbor had his garage filled with twenty 5 gallon cans of gas. It bothered us a little to see this because of the gas shortage and also because of safety issues but people were desperate here.
Every other night we heard fire engine sirens and learned from speaking to the township that there were daily chimney fires and generator fires from over or misuse.
Our neighbor across the street put this sign up for all to see. It says "JCP&L SHOULD BE SUED". We saw NO JCP&L work-trucks in our neighborhood until Nov. 9th, twelve days AFTER we lost power.
This became part of our daily ritual. Here is my six year old son gathering kindling so we could start a fire in 40 degree temperatures. (This photo was taken yesterday, when we had a balmy 55 degree day so he did not need to be bundled up but most days it did not go over 45 and at night, went below freezing)
My little boy also lost Halloween this year. The whole neighborhood still did not have power for the state wide postponed Halloween date on November 5th. We got a total of 2 trick or treaters and he only went to close neighbors homes. He was really sad about this and so were we.
Lev chopping up our firewood. We are lucky that we have a fireplace and were able to purchase firewood. But as you can see, some of the logs were rather big so he had to go out daily to split the wood to a reasonable and burnable size. On colder days, he would go out up to three times to split wood so we could keep the house warm when it got down to 27 degrees Fahrenheit. We never got the house warmer than 57 degrees, even burning firewood in the fireplace all day.
This is enough wood to burn for about four hours. On a warmer day, this would be good for keeping the living room warm for one evening. On colder days, we would need about three piles this size.
This is what happened to our fence when a neighbor's tree fell on it during the storm. The tree was cleared away by the neighbor two days after the storm hit so I did not get a chance to take a photo then, but as you can see, it did some serious damage.
We are SO lucky that this was the worst damage the storm did to our property. And thank God there was little to no rain and we had the generator to run our sump pumps so our basement did not flood. Many others were not so lucky.
Our neighbors BRAND NEW car after the tree that fell on it was removed by the township. This particular neighbor has left and just left the car like this, broken window uncovered, the plates removed and we have not seen them in about two weeks.
Another neighbor, post tree removal. This house had a giant tree fall and crush their roof and chimney, forcing the family to leave until they can get it fixed.
The root ball of another tree that fell in our neighborhood. This is about 20 feet wide.
This might be hard to see but this is a giant pine branch hanging from the electrical wires one street away from us, this photo was taken on November 11th and the power company had still not cleared it away.
As of today, November 12th, we have our power back after a stressful 14 days without it. I have lost two weeks of work, as I work from home on the computer. My children lost nine days of school. We spent $200 on firewood, nearly $350 on gas to run our generator, close to $200 for non-perishable food and supplies to deal with this ordeal and lost about $150 worth of perishable food. Not to mention the emotional and physical turmoil this has caused us.
When we called JCP&L we were greeted with uninformed, unsympathetic and rude customer service. We were lied to by JCP&L about how many people did not have power still. We were lied to by JCP&L about our turn on dates. First they told us Monday, then Wednesday then Sunday and then no ETA. We spoke to the electrical workers we saw in our areas. They told use that JCP&L instructed them to work only 9-5 and not to work a minute longer as to not incur overtime. JCP&L did not even know that this part of town was connected to a substation out of our county until Friday November 9th. The lack of professionalism, organisation and greed shown by this company towards their customer is staggering.
I learned a lot from this experience I learned how dependent we are on electricity, something we sort of take for granted. I have a whole new respect for this wonderful element and will be far more conservative with it from now on. I also learned that sometimes big business does not care that much about their customer base. This is why I signed a petition asking the governor of New Jersey to get rid of JCP&L in New Jersey.
I also learned a lot about myself and my family. This certainly was a learning experience for us and proved to us that we can deal with what comes our way. And so many people reached out to us, my parents, friends and neighbors and I want to thank you all for being so supportive to us during all this. Thank you to all the linemen who came from out of state to help as well. We had linemen from as far as Kentucky up here helping our understaffed and ill-prepared power company. Thank you SO much. You made this much more bearable than it would have been without your help.
