2
New York when I was young. As an adult, I moved to Puerto Rico to
study in 1998 and right after I moved there, Hurricane George hit the
island and we were without power and water for at least a month.
There was a risk of losing my whole semester at the University of
Puerto Rico. After graduating, I moved to the Bay Area in the West
Coast for few years, moved back to New York in 2005. Right after I
moved back to New York, Hurricane Katrina hit, and many people
fled from New Orleans to stay at the house I was living in because my
roommates at the time had many friends there. Since living in New
York City, there have been cyclones in Brooklyn which is very
unusual and warm winters where trees bloom. Weather conditions are
not normal or predictable much at all anymore. Now we have super
storms and “bombogenesis” snow storms. The norm seems to be
abnormal weather.
Q4: Hurricane Sandy devastated New York on 29 October 2012. How
was your experience dealing with it?
A4: The year before when the news came out that Hurricane Irene would
hit in 2011, they said it would hit us really badly. So, I evacuated
since I live near the coastal area, but it actually was not so bad. I
stayed with my ate [older sister] because she also lives here in
Brooklyn. Then, when Hurricane Sandy was headed our way, I
decided to stay, thinking it would be good to ensure nothing horrible
happened like windows breaking, etc. I also knew a lot of people also
deciding to stay in Red Hook versus evacuate because we are a small
close-knit community. So for those reasons, it felt safe to stay.
The morning of the storm, there was already some flooding and I went
out with neighborhood friends to see how far in the floodwaters came
in. Things seemed okay. Later that night though, the storm started to
hit really badly. The rain was constant and heavy. I live on the fourth
(4 ) floor of my apartment building so it was not so bad for me
personally as I did not have to worry about flooding in my actual
apartment. I have a friend in the neighborhood also in Gabriela New
York, Tina Cocadiz, and we were texting the whole time during the
storm to make sure we were both okay. She lived a few blocks away
from me more inland, away from the coastline and had a vantage point
from the third floor of her building onto the street.
th
Little by little, things started to happen. It was scary as I could hear
and see the explosion of transformers in the distance cutting out
power. In the middle of the night, the electricity went out. The water
was coming into the neighborhood and flooding the streets from all
different directions. Tina and I continued to text through the night,
and she could see the surge starting to cover the parked cars on her
block. The flood surge had really come in.
By the next morning, the surge had gone out. People in the street
were coming out to assess the damage. When we went outside the