Hurricane Sandy

I was writing this post throughout the past several days. I had hoped to be posting pieces of it in real time, but internet was very spotty and I was unable to upload anything from Monday morning onward.

For the sake of my Mom, for the sake of posterity, and (mostly) for the sake of my sanity (I tend to go stir crazy cooped up in times like this), I am going to attempt to document a little slice of the J-M experience with Hurricane Sandy.

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk in the Fairy Forest (Meera’s name for the woods outside Sayre). Knowing that after Sandy, the leaves will all be off the trees, we tried hard to take in the beautiful fall foliage of 2012. The sky was pale with a thick cloud cover. There was an eery ‘calm before the storm’ up there at the top of South Mountain.

Came home from our walk to find email after email of cancellations for the next two days. Including K,O,M’s school cancelled. And all Lehigh classes/events cancelled. “Due to the increasingly severe weather forecast of Hurricane Sandy and possible power outages, all classes for Monday and Tuesday will be cancelled.” Got the kids to bed. Posted this to Facebook:

“State of PA has officially been declared to be in a state of emergency. Kyle, Owen, and Meera’s school closed for Monday. All Lehigh classes cancelled for Monday and Tuesday (the only other time I’ve known LU to cancel classes was a year ago during the Halloween snow storm of 2011). This will be our first major storm/state-of-emergency while living on campus… never a dull moment… tomorrow will bring the J-Ms and the rest of our dorm residents together ‘at home with no school.’ Now *that* should be INTERESTING.”

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29

Woke up this morning to very gray skies, steady wind, steady light rain, and a very quiet LU.

10:30am Our strategy for today = to attempt to enjoy the power/electricity as much as possible before it (potentially/probably) goes out. So, this morning was an iPad free-for-all for the boys while Meera watched her favorite music videos (Taylor Swift! Pink!) on Braydon’s laptop. The bambinos are now in the midst of a My Little Pony (Netflix) marathon. And we’re not letting ourselves feel one ounce of guilt for any of it.

2:00pm Just got back from lunch at Cort Dining Hall. The most laid-back and relaxed I’ve ever seen LU students (no classes, no meetings, no events for at least the next two days + exams and assignments postponed = a bunch of happy college kids!). Even the (many) students we saw studying were more toned down than usual and the sense of reduced stress is palpable. The bambinos had a great lunch then had a blast ‘working the room’ checking in with all the students they know (and of course many who they previously did not know). Everything feeling warm and fuzzy. On the way to the dining hall we saw lots of sandbags had been laid down around buildings. Trucks and vans very busy everywhere. University is clearly in emergency preparedness mode.

2:30 Cupcake Making! (and basketball in the hall)

3:45 The new Tinkerbell movie (Secret of the Wings), with our Head Gryphon, Sarah. Isn’t it a fabulous coincidence that we had bought it just in time for Sandy??!

Current weather models have Hurricane Sandy heading for the Lehigh Valley, with the anticipated peak of intensity taking place between 6 p.m. and midnight tonight. We urge all members of the Lehigh community to exercise extreme caution during this storm, which is expected to bring heavy rains and strong winds.

5:00 Wind picked up significantly and noticeably, exactly at the time predicted: 5:00pm.

5:15 “Leaf Sledding” outside our dorm with some of our favorite friends/neighbors/students! …then a tree fell just across the parking lot… which knocked down power lines… which sent massive sparks flying (K&O thought it was very exciting: “fireworks!!!”… M not so much: “scary!”… Mommy&Papi: “reality check! this thing’s for real!”)… which sent us immediately into the building, not to go back outside again anytime soon.

8:00 Kids are in bed. We still have power. The fraternity house directly behind our building has no power. Lots of people all around us without power. Wind is whipping, raining very hard. Very, very dark outside. Heavy strong winds against our windows are pretty scary at times. At the end of the day, I am amazed at the Lehigh students. My college roommate and I were emailing today, and we were both in agreement that — given the circumstances — and based on our own college experience (!) — we couldn’t believe how little drinking was going on here. Students we see seem to be taking it easy, hanging out, studying, and staying calm. Very little drama. When we saw a tree fall this afternoon (see above, 5:15), many students ran out of nearby buildings to make sure everyone was ok and to help out. True colors show in times like this, and I have to say: I’m really impressed with these LU kids.

8:46 Power went out. But came right back on.

9:30 Lost power completely. Bambinos stayed asleep. Emergency lighting goes on in the hallways. LU kids coming out of their rooms into our apartment. Everyone on their smartphones in the dark.

Late into the night — Sarah (our Head Gryphon/Friend/Neighbor/Student) hangs out in our apartment with Braydon and I. Sarah and I sat on the couch watching out the windows and listening together to the hurricane thrashing around us. The wind was extreme. Rain in gusts slashing against the window. Looking out over the city of Bethlehem was like watching a fireworks display as transformer after transformer exploded with huge dome-like flashes of neon blue light. One of the freakiest nights ever.

Finally went to bed that night with some raw nerves. We moved Meera into our bed with to sleep with me. We moved Meera’s bed mattress onto the floor in K & O’s room, so that Braydon could sleep with them. I fell asleep that night trying to comfort Meera as we lay there hearing the storm on the other side of the building’s wall.

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30

Woke up to relative calm. Although still windy and gusty, the wind had died down a lot, and so had the rain. Facebook post:

Got through the night safe and sound. Wind has calmed. No power at Lehigh since about 9:30pm. Hoping the outage doesn’t last too long. In the meantime, grateful for the iPad battery’s long lifespan! Thinking this morning of the people in NYC/NJ/mid-Atlantic coast who were hit hardest… and friends locally with severe damage to homes, cars, etc… Given how intense it was here I can’t even imagine how scary it was/is there.

We discovered that the Lodge (the community center building in Sayre Village) was running on a generator, and thus had power. We packed up to camp out there for the morning. A few students joined us…

Soon we had to leave because the Lodge was quickly becoming Center of Operations for the crisis/emergency teams. We moved to the lounge in our building… for another viewing of Tinkerbell, this time on a battery-powered-laptop.

Around noon we got official word that all classes would be cancelled through Friday (to resume Monday), LU was being evacuated, we should not plan to return until Sunday, and we had to be out by 2:30pm. We had 2.5 hours to figure out where to go, and pack up to get out. Facebook post:

LU ALERT: Classes canceled Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Will resume normal schedule on Monday. Stay updated at lehigh.edu. OMG! Unprecedented!

For months we had plans to be in Massachusetts this coming weekend, Friday – Sunday. I am giving a talk in Boston on Saturday, and we had decided to go as a family, stopping for a concert in Worcester on Friday night. This meant we had three nights to do something with ourselves. Trying to think quick, and make the most of it, we decided (for better or worse) to go to Providence, RI — a city that we like a lot, but haven’t visited in a long time — which would get us out of the direct path of Sandy, but still get us up toward where we’d need to be for the weekend. We quickly made a hotel reservation, and packed up. That was a crazy couple of hours.

Lehigh students who had nowhere to go were being directed to check into an Emergency Shelter set up in Grace Hall. We had to swing by my office to pick up a couple of books I needed, and on the way, we realized that the bambinos thought that the “Shelter” they kept hearing about meant that the students needed to go into the woods to create ‘forts’/shelters from branches in the woods. How, exactly, they had come to think this, I don’t know. But I thought it was really important for us to bring them into Grace Hall to see the “Shelter.” Grace is next door to my office, so we quickly stepped in. We saw a bunch of students we know and love there.

The bambinos felt much better knowing that the students would be inside a safe building being powered with a generator. With that all cleared up, we did a quick tour of the campus— to see the damage— before we hit the highway. It was really heartbreaking to see so many gorgeous, historic, iconic trees laying on the the ground all over campus. It was also amazing to see how little structural damage had been done to buildings— all things considered.

This is what they are looking at:

It was like this all over campus, and I was taken aback by how hard it hit me to see it.

We were on the highway by 3:30. Facebook post while driving away:

Lehigh evacuated. We are driving away now. Devastating tree damage on campus. Historic iconic trees down on UC lawn, side of Packard/Alumni Memorial, and all over campus. No idea when power will be restored.

None of us had eaten much of anything all day and we were all very hungry. We drove for a couple of hours straight, through New Jersey, without finding any exits with power on. Nothing open anywhere along the route. Finally, just into New York state, we found an exit with an open gas station and a lit-up McDonalds. Braydon waited in line to get gas while I waited in line to get McDonalds. Just as I was ordering there was a massive transformer explosion just across the street, and McDonalds lost their power completely. They turned everyone in line away, needing to shut down, but when they saw that I had three kids with me, and was willing to pay in cash, they gave us whatever they could. As gross as McDonalds is, it tasted like one of the best things we’d ever eaten… and we all ate every single bite as we drove down the pitch-dark highway.

After driving in the dark and rain for much of the trip, we made it to the hotel in Rhode Island around 9:30pm and we all collapsed into bed soon after. It had been a long, long day. Facebook post from that night:

We are cozied up in a hotel, now far from the devestation, evacuated from our Lehigh home, but safe and grateful to have had it so *relatively* easy.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31

We didn’t get up until 8:00, which is highly unusual for the J-M bambinos. We woke up feeling rested and so grateful for warm, clean, well-equipped hotels and the ability to stay in them when needed. We had a leisurely morning eating breakfast at the hotel, then swimming in the pool. Nothing like a swimming pool for the bambinos to blow off steam, soothe their nerves, and take the edge off.

Just around noon, back in our room, the bambinos watched the Disney Channel while Braydon and I sat together trying to figure out what the heck we were going to do with our next couple of days. We were feeling really unsettled and discombobulated. And I got a text message saying that power had been restored to our apartment’s building, that it was safe to come back, and we were welcome to do so. And within just a minute of that text, we got a phone call saying that the kids’ school was going to re-open for Thursday. Braydon and I took one look at each other, I made a quick visit to the hotel’s front desk, and we decided to just pack it all back up and head home. We really, really, really felt strongly that we wanted to be home.

And so, within an hour, we were back in the car again, to head back to LU. We made a quick stop at Subway for lunch, ran into a grocery store for snacks for the ride, and we were back on the highway again, to make the trip back. Posted to Facebook from the car:

We are headed back to LU! Just got word that our family can return: power is on, and it is safe, in our specific building (not all of campus). What a crazy 48 hours we have had!!!

It was a crazy 3 days. But we were so fortunate. My Facebook post from last night:

We are back home again. Thanks to a bunch of amazing LU students/friends/neighbors we came home to have the best Halloween night ever (despite Halloween in our region being officially cancelled). So grateful for all we have in our lives right now. And so happy to be home sweet home! {it has been quite a crazy few days}

We came home to the best Halloween ever. That will have to be a whole other post… (coming soon).

We are grateful to have weathered this storm with such relative ease. And our hearts are heavy for those who are suffering so nearby. Please consider giving to help those impacted most by Hurricane Sandy. Here is a link to a trustworthy organization that will use our donations wisely, and which includes an option for prioritizing disaster relief not just for those areas affected in the U.S., but also for the Caribbean if you are so inclined (as we are):

http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1103945268066-302/Hurricane+Sandy_+bulletin+insert_103012.pdf