Feb 3, 2020

The natural disaster that I recall most vividly was Hurricane Sandy, and I was living in New Jersey at the time, right on the Hudson River. Sandy really hit us hard. The bottom two floors of my apartment building had to be evacuated. My building was filled mostly with young people, with children and they all had to leave their apartments for about four or five days and go, God knows where. Fortunately, I was on the third or fourth floor, I forget which, and evacuation was optional and I chose not to, which was fine, but the bottom two floors of our building with all the offices and meeting rooms and package rooms were all flooded out. All the stores on the Hudson, stores and the bank and offices were all flooded out and were all closed for about four to six weeks. We lived there in fear that these places wouldn’t open. That they would just decide that they didn’t want another bank of that type in Jersey City or a Duane Reade could do without this one. But fortunately they did all open up after about four to six weeks, but it was a very iffy time because there were few places to shop. Supermarkets were closed, delicatessens were closed, everything was flooded out.

Yeah, and I wasn’t personally affected, but my kids were very worried about me because they had no idea what the damage was where I was living. And I wasn’t familiar with my cell phone and I didn’t call them to tell them that I was all right and it was a mess. But anyway, I survived and I never want to have to go through it again. In fact, ever since then, whenever I got an apartment, I made sure I lived above the second floor so I wouldn’t be affected by another hurricane.

I don’t remember whether I had power or not. If I didn’t, it didn’t last very long. But I’ve been without power several times. But I don’t remember whether we were at that time, or whether we had water or I don’t think we were very affected that way. What I remember was we couldn’t shop, at the nearest stores, which were on the Hudson. We had to go West further into Jersey City because they weren’t affected by the floods, but that lasted about four to six weeks.

This was seven years ago. I had one daughter living in Manhattan, one living in Westchester, one living in, I can’t remember whether she was in Brooklyn or whether she was on the West coast, but none of them had any problems. They were all off the water.

It was amazing, my apartment had a view of the Hudson and I was sitting in my living room looking out at it and I could see the waters coming up into my building. It was scary, but it was absolutely fantastic. Very impressive.