Withstanding Sandy
[/media-credit]WILDWOOD, N.J. - For anyone who asked if it was worth it to risk so much to cover this storm the answer is yes. The last two days have been filled with so much adventure, fun, excitement, panic, stress and relief. One never feels quite as alive as they do when they think they could possibly die.
And so tomorrow, many of us will wake up to a normal life again. For others, a life that’s been changed, destroyed and may now be facing incredibly unforeseen challenges. The people of the Jersey Shore are and always have been, resilient. The locals especially will and already have been working together to recover from the impact of Hurricane Sandy.
In terms of kinetic energy (a measure of a storm’s windspeed integrated over how wide the area the wind is blowing) Sandy became supercharged and shattered records going back to the 1930’s.
Jeff Masters, co-founder and director of meteorology at Weather Underground told The Huffington Post that the storm’s size and energy beat that of Katrina, Andrew and Wilma, all Category 5 storms. According to Masters, Sandy was so vast with winds blowing over such a wide area of the ocean that,
it put a tremendous volume of ocean water in motion and carried it with it as it moved northwards. And guess what? When that water hit land, it had nowhere to go but on the land and generate a record storm surge.
Although places like Seaside Heights and Long Beach Island were devastated greatly, (Seaside losing its amusement piers) Cape May County and the barrier island of Wildwood seemed to withstand Sandy surprisingly well. There was certainly a lot of flooding, especially in West Wildwood, but as of Tuesday morning’s low tide, many flooded areas receded.
By late afternoon, signs of normalcy started to come back to the island and by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, residents and business owners were allowed back on.
Sandy definitely lived up to her name, sweeping an incredible amount of sand inland onto the barrier islands, especially in North Wildwood, Cape May and Margate.
Though the ocean reached the boardwalk in Wildwood, there was very little damage to it. However, in Atlantic City, the northern part of the boardwalk, where it wraps around the inlet by the Revel Casino, was completely destroyed. This is a small section of the Atlantic City boardwalk and does not have any shops on it. The Huffington Post had reported in a headline that the Atlantic City Boardwalk had been destroyed, whereas that just wasn’t true at all. A national audience would be deceived by such a headline but locals who know the boardwalk understand that this was just a small, pretty much vacant section secluded from the rest of it.
Using social media, the #INN team asked area residents and vacationers to Tweet, Instagram or Facebook us their streets and addresses as we spent the day checking up on homes and communicating back to those who had asked. Reporting on the story is one thing, but we decided it would be best to also help and reassure people who had fled or stayed off the barrier islands as to the conditions of their homes and businesses.
Recently, Atlantic City has been trying to re-define its image with a new marketing campaign to draw in visitors to the resort town. Do AC or as it’s known on Twitter: #doAC has been the new slogan that’s taken the island by storm. (No pun intended).
Tiffany Csaszar, a local resident of Absecon, N.J. posted on Facebook:
Sending love out to all my friends on the right coast. Lots of folks without power and horrible flooding here, but we made it through. That storm was surreal… never seen anything like it. I’m gonna attempt to swim outta Absecon and venture into AC in a bit. Anyone local know where volunteers are needed today? I’ve got a crew. And a kayak. Let’s Do AC.
This isn’t over, the cleanup is just beginning and there will be plenty of ways for people to get involved. Already, groups such as the Occupy Atlantic City movement are accepting donations for hurricane victims and are assembling anyone who wants to help volunteer with reconstruction and cleanup efforts.
When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie scolded New Jersey residents for not leaving the barrier islands, saying he would never understand “us people” he was right. He will never understand why our team, the two houses across the street and the two separate groups of locals we were in constant contact with had to stay, and remain completely unharmed, because we had to experience this for ourselves. We had to see a possibly once in a lifetime experience of the wrath of God and nature. We had to report on the storm, not just out of a lust for adventure but because we know people want and need to know what happened to their island. Personal reports were given to dozens of people today on aftermath conditions. Many of us, journalists especially, needed to be here and nothing was going to stop us from riding out Sandy.
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