I’ve been through more than my share of hurricanes over the years. People don’t think of New Jersey when they think of hurricanes. They think of Florida. However, every few years we get one hurricane that tracks right up the coast and hits New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy comes to mind.
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy was interesting because it was large, hit the news, etc. We had a hurricane the year before that knocked out power for three days. Then a couple months later an ice storm knocked out power for three days again.
You might be wondering why we were losing power so much. The answer is quite simple. Thomas Edison lived in New Jersey, so this was one of the first places in the country to get electricity. That also means we have some of the oldest, least reliable, electrical infrastructure in the country. Furthermore, the wires are almost entirely strung on poles.
Underground wiring? Not in Edison’s day! Plus, the ground is all rock. We also have lots of trees. The trees come down in hurricanes (and ice storms) hit the wires, snap the poles and generally make a hash out of the local grid, land in the street, and screw up traffic too.
After getting two multi-day outages within a couple months the year prior to Hurricane Sandy, I decided the grid had deteriorated to the point where I needed a generator, preferably not some little item from Home Depot, but a real, wired into the house, standby generator that will automatically kick on when the power goes out.
So I started trying to find someone to give me a quote. I couldn’t get anyone to even return my call. The 2011 outages had swamped all the generator installation firms in New Jersey. All the generator installers were booked solid because lots of people had the same idea.
I just had to wait the panic out…
I was convinced I would just have to wait until the panic died down, when I wandered into Home Depot and they had a big sign offering generators of the sort I was looking for. They gave me a phone number, which I figured I would call, not get a call back, and then I’d still be in the same position.
So I called, hit an answering machine, left a message, and figured it was working out exactly as Murphy had taught me to expect. Then the strangest thing happened. They called me back! I explained what I was interested in, and they scheduled to have a salesman come by. I figured this would be a no show after months of trying to get a quote on a generator.
Surprise! The salesman came by and we chatted. He checked out the whole house electrical system and offered to prepare 4 quotes. One would be for the whole house and another for about 2/3rds of the house. Then there would be two more quotes for quieter units.
We ultimately went with the 2/3rds of the house, noisy version. Even so, this was a major purchase, involving natural gas lines, electrical work, the actual unit, town inspectors, and a substantial cost. When it was all done, the installers explained that the generator would come on for 20 minutes a week, just to warm up the engine. No problem. I figured we would now never experience another power outage due to the vagaries of Murphy. I was right for the next 8 months. 😊
Then along came Sandy…
Then we experienced Hurricane Sandy. When the forecasts started talking about the hurricane, everyone cleaned out the grocery stores, just like you would expect. We also gassed up the cars and filled the jerry cans. When the storm hit, we were without power for 20 seconds. Success! Of course, the noise was horrendous after about an hour of listening to the generator, and the power remained out for the next 8 days.
One of the interesting things about this was since we had power, we could tell how reliable the cable and internet service was. Normally you would lose that service the moment you lost power. We had cable and Internet service for the first day while all of our neighbors sat in the dark. So we now knew that the cable company had emergency power for a day before they ran out of fuel. Cell phones lasted about the same length of time.
So other than losing the communications services, we were fine, while all of our neighbors were without power day after day. We were expecting some neighbors to come by and ask to charge up their gizmos, but it didn’t happen. Finally, one fellow came by and asked if we had Internet service so he could use it to check his email. Murphy had found a victim and it wasn’t me! 😊 We could have helped him the first day, but by the time he came by the Internet was gone.
Big News
Hurricane Sandy was big enough a news story that you don’t need to hear about flooding in New York City or the Jersey shore from me. I’ll relate our personal experience. There are two streets one could take to get out of our little suburban neighborhood. Both had trees come down across the power lines, snap poles, and make them impassable. This didn’t look like a big deal at the time.
What I didn’t know is that the process was first a utility worker turns off the power. Then someone from the town removes the tree. Then the utility comes back to make repairs. Finally, another utility crew turns on the power for the area. As if this multi-crew process weren’t bad enough, my local utility had 45,000 downed trees damaging power lines and blocking roads to deal with. The result was I was going nowhere as all the roads were blocked.
Lessons Learned
One of the things I have learned from Murphy is that no matter what goes wrong, it will screw up traffic.
For my family, the whole experience became a nuisance, a very noisy, 8 day, nuisance. Next time, spend the extra money for the quieter generator. After day 4, we were at least able to get out and drive around. It was apparent that the utilities were trying to get power to commercial areas first, e.g. you do want the grocery stores and gas stations working.
Oceanfront property!
Meanwhile…
Meanwhile several friends who had vacation properties at the New Jersey shore suffered damage. They eventually made repairs and sold those properties to some future suckers. Some people who live all year round at the shore were still in emergency shelters months later. I also learned that insurance payments were going straight to mortgage companies instead of the home owners.
This created a mess when someone had say $50,000 worth of damage, and instead of getting a check to make repairs, their mortgage got reduced and now they had to go get another loan to repair their home. Murphy nailed a bunch of people with that one. I had one downed tree in the back yard. It didn’t hit anything. I told the tree service to take care of people with more urgent needs, like they had a tree in their kitchen instead of their back yard. ☹ Come see me when it got slow.
Afterward I tried talking to my town council about starting to put some of the electrical lines in the ground. They have a 20 year program to resurface the streets. Every year they do a section of road and after 20 years they have resurfaced the entire town, then they repeat. My suggestion was put lines in the ground just ahead of the resurfacing. The reaction was “but that will take 20 years!” Well, DUH! No interest.
The more things stay the same…
The wires are still strung from poles and we still have unreliable electrical service. None of my neighbors acquired a generator. I asked my local service station about him possibly getting a generator. He explained that it would cost him $20,000 to install a generator that would do nothing for him except allow him to pump gas, and he made money mostly from fixing cars, not pumping gas. All the other stations faced the same economics. Nobody was going to sink money into a generator when it was cheaper just to close for a few days. Traffic tie ups due to no gasoline? Not my problem!
However, the natural gas company came through this year and replaced all the natural gas lines in town, which are below ground, with new, higher pressure, lines, so we do have a patch in every street in town. We had no problems with natural gas during Hurricane Sandy. 😊 In 20 years all those patched roads will have been resurfaced and we will still have overhead power lines.
Water and sewer systems also worked fine throughout Hurricane Sandy. That gravity run 1800s era system is great. Preppers worry about losing water during a grid down scenario. Our water system pre-dates the grid, so it doesn’t matter. We already have a 19th century water system! The only thing you need power for is the meter so they can bill you. I can live without that!
In summary…
In summary, Hurricane Sandy caused havoc all around, but was just a minor nuisance for us. Prepping was starting to work for us, but from the reaction of the rest of the People’s Republic of New Jersey, doing anything to reduce the problems next time is a non-starter. There has been absolutely no public response to make the local grid more reliable. The shore has been rebuilt pretty much as it was, albeit there is a roller coaster about 100 yards off shore. The next similar hurricane will be largely a repeat at the shore.
Looks like Murphy still has plenty of victims ready for his return.
We each have our own challenges. I hope you continue to enjoy the series.