My parents were able to get back into their house at around 1:00 PM yesterday. They live on Long Beach Island, which was predicted to be one of the areas that would get hit hardest. The verdict: absolutely nothing. There was some street flooding, but this is a barrier island in New Jersey; the streets flood in some areas flood after a normal heavy rain. It turns out that they never even lost power and could have easily ridden the storm out with the lights on and the AC going, had our fearmongering governor not shut down their only safety route thirty hours before the actual storm was set to hit. Many restaurants, businesses, and groceries were open yesterday; all are expected to reopen today.
My thoughts go to the people in the areas that were actually affected.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body