$30 billion of damage

New Jersey, famous for its boardwalk and small beach communities, has been battered by many-a hurricanes and storms but this one was different. It wasn’t just some average storm: this was the combination of two giant hurricanes and was, to this date, the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Jersey shore.

The amount of destruction was surreal seeing 10 feet of sand on former roads I walked on every day or seeing houses that once stood proud and strong reduced to nothing but a pile of sand and rubble. Never have I felt so small and powerless, seeing structures and areas that have braved that fury of countless storms just to be reduced to a memory and a pile of rubble, Once a giant lavish restaurant and a monument to human ingenuity, all brought down by natures tendency to show the arrogance of humans defying nature through the things humans build, now merely a slab of concrete a few haunting memories and a splinter or two.

Just a few days before everything was how it always was, but the air was filled with fear and news station drowning the eerie quietness about the impending doom.

The sky grew darker and darker that October night.The started out as a soft howl and and a light rain then as the monstrosity known as hurricane sandy approached the clouds grew darker, the rain hit with more force audible even in the “safety” of your home, and the wind morphs into what sounds more of a scream then wind.I have never felt more trapped and powerless I thought my house was safe but every time I looked out the window I was the water rising and rising. At first the street is flooded than it is up to the yard in what seems like five minutes it has covered half the yard before I knew it It was at my door step. I didn’t know what to do where to go if it goes inside the house.What seemed like every ten minutes you hear the cracking of trees maybe or is it power lines. Before I know it the light flickers then darkener. After a loud crack pitch blackness. The power is out I decide to look out the window and see the old oak tree with so many memories tied to it sway more then any tree should in the violent wind.The tree limbs torn off scattered all over the yard along with the limbs of many other trees remnants that once filled the lawns of the surrounding houses the old oak tree tore up the soggy saturated earth was torn up and laying on the ground defeated. Would I even make it through the storm, But somehow I did. Still to this day when it comes to storms I always get a little nervous and think back to that storm.The next time the news talks about a storm and how dangerous it is, instead of just blowing it off maybe think. Can this be the next hurricane sandy?