Hurricane Sandy Came on Monday Night

Hurricane Sandy struck two years ago this week. This is one student’s experience, taken from Changing Every Day. When you’re finished reading, take the quiz to test your comprehension.

Hurricane Sandy

Helen Huang

A hurricane is horrible; it can destroy houses, trees, and hurt people. It can also knock down power lines and cause floods.

Hurricane Sandy came on Monday night. That day I bought a lot of food: vegetables, fish, meat, noodles, milk, bottled water and some dry food. Also I prepared a lot of water in buckets. I heard the radio say: “Hurricane Sandy is going to be more serious than Hurricane Irene.” So that morning, I made a lot of food in case the power went out because we had decided to stay home. At 7:00 p.m., I called my friend who lives in my neighborhood. She said, “Maybe at 8 p.m., there will be no light and no water.” She told me to store water. At that time, it was dark outside with strong winds and heavy rain; the hurricane was coming. I asked my son and my daughter to come eat immediately, because I was worried about the power shutting down. So we ate quickly. After we ate, my husband helped me clean and wash all of the dishes .Suddenly, the light turned off. It was 8:40 p.m. My home was in complete darkness.

I took out the candles, and my son helped me to light them. My daughter was excited, so she called her cousins and asked them if they still had light. I called my brother to tell him that we had no power. He said there were no problems at his home. After that, all the phones stopped working too, so we couldn’t make phone calls. Everyone in my home was quiet. Outside it was still raining hard, and it was very windy. I looked out the window: The road was flooded, and I couldn’t see anything outside. At that moment, no water was coming either. My son said: “We have nothing to do.”

I said, “Go to sleep.”

He said, “It’s too early to go to sleep; we can play cards.” So we played cards with the light from the candles. I have never experienced this, but we enjoyed playing, specifically my daughter, because she won many times.

The next morning, I woke up at 9, and I looked out the window. The storm had stopped, the sky was bright, outside was quiet, and a lot of leaves and branches had fallen on the ground. A few cars were running, and a few people were walking on the street. I turned on the radio, and I heard that a lot of areas were flooded and had no power. There were no subways and no school. It was terrible; people stayed home waiting for the power to return.

My neighborhood, Chinatown, was a dead town. After the hurricane, all of the stores were closed. People couldn’t buy food or what they needed to buy. Some charities sent food and water door to door, and the military cars in my neighborhood gave food and water to people. People carried water from the fire hydrants. Some people live on high floors, and they climbed upstairs with difficulty with a bucket of water.

Fortunately, the buses were running, so people could take the bus to work and could go uptown to buy food. On Thursday, we went to my brother’s home until the power returned, which was Friday night. Thank God.

During those four days with no power, people suffered with no water for days. Many people lost their homes and family, a lot of people still have no power, and they still live in the darkness. This was a horrible super storm.