I’ve been keeping track of Sandy the Hurricane and the unnamed Nor’easter that
have been pounding the mid-Atlantic
states with a one-two punch for several hours now. It’s a record breaker—by storm surge, rainfall,
damage, and duration.
New Jersey, where I was born and
raised and where I lived for sixty years, is taking a heavy hit. And I am still worried about my children,
their spouses, and my six grandchildren, who all still live there.
Last year they were hit with a
hurricane named Irene which knocked out power for days on end and left a huge
impression on my children in central and northwest New Jersey. Sandy will be harder on them, at least twice
as hard, if the early estimates are even half true.
Irony is retired grandparents moving
to hurricane-prone Florida and not having a single one seven years while normally hurricane-safe New Jersey has now had two. Sometimes
it’s hard to figure out what God’s plan is.
Or how the vagaries of weather can figure into the Divine Plan at all. It looks for all the world like there isn’t
any plan.
In June, we did have a semi-hit when hurricane Isaac, which impacted downtown Tampa and the Republican National
Convention, about an hour west of our home in central Florida’s
Twin Cities, Zephyrhills and Dade City. We
seemed pretty vulnerable for a while. But
by the time Isaac got to Dade City, he was too tired to do much damage--and anyway, more irony, my wife and I were safely
vacationing in New Jersey at the time.
When
Sandy caromed off Florida a day or two ago, leaving the East Coast of the state
wet and windy, we in Central Florida merely cursed the occasionally brisk
breezes we faced on the golf course. “Is
that a one or two-club correction?” we asked one another while we mumbled curses
under our breath.
Meantime, when all was counted up, New
Jersey suffered $30 billion in economic losses, 346,000 homes damaged or destroyed,
and 37 people dead. Cleanup costs ran to
an estimated $37 billion. A national tragedy.
