A week after Hurricane Sandy damaged southern New Jersey and wreaked havoc along the Eastern Seaboard, the road to recovery has been split in two — one where life is returning to normal and another where the prospect of normality is as dim as the city was during the power outage.
While Lower Manhattan and NYU had power restored on Friday following a four-day power outage, other areas including Staten Island and devastated regions of New Jersey are struggling to find basic necessities.
The United States’ death toll is now at 113, with New York being the hardest hit with 48 fatalities, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Eqecat, Inc., a company that projects economic losses of catastrophes, puts the potential loss in the range of $30 to $50 billion, which is second only to Hurricane Katrina as the most expensive hurricane in U.S. history.
“Sandy was an impressive storm because of its strength, size and the fact that it transitioned from being a hurricane to an ‘extratropical storm’ just as it hit,” said Edwin Gerber, an NYU professor of mathematics at the Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science.
This sort of super storm essentially paralyzed New York City on Monday and Tuesday and forced NYU to close for the entire week, canceling classes and evacuating residence halls without power.
Weinstein dining hall and Kimmel Center Market Place served three meals per day to displaced NYU students free of charge. Kimmel also provided outlets, cots and internet access.
CAS freshman Ruosi Wang, who lives in Rubin residence hall but relocated to Goddard, said losing power was frustrating. Wang remained positive, however.
“I feel a lot more prepared for future disasters, and I made a few new friends,” Wang said.
RAs were called upon to deal with all of the consequences of Sandy, which included constantly doing rounds.
“I think it brought people together because people couldn’t really leave, and there was nowhere to go after a while,” said Alicia Bell, a Goddard RA.
Being an RA in a building that did not lose power, Bell found the storm to be surreal.
“I heard all the stories about what people were going through, so it was hard to believe that there was actually horrible stuff going on outside when I had power and hot water,” Bell said.
Some NYU students remained levelheaded in spite of Sandy’s negative effects, focusing on the future rather than the recent chaos.
“I’m glad that my midterm was postponed,” said Cassie Wuest, an LSP freshman. “I’ve been spending my time preparing for the storm, so I haven’t studied.”
A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Nov. 5 print edition. Tricia Lin is a staff writer. Email her at [email protected].