Book review—Super Storm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy

Being a pleasure sailor for almost 50 years, natural science and weather have fascinated me for many years. Winds and storms can become very unpredictable and go from very light winds to almost gale force strength during a leisurely afternoon sail.

In 2015 alone, we witnessed two memorable hurricanes. The first was Hurricane Joaquin near the Bahamas, which destroyed the cargo ship “El Faro” with 33 people on board.

The second was Hurricane Patricia, which was the strongest storm ever measured with winds up to 200 miles per hour. Fortunately, it was confined to one area and made landfall in a relatively unpopulated area of Mexico’s West Coast. While it caused damage, there were no casualties.

To my knowledge, there has only been one storm in my lifetime receiving the designation of a “Super Storm.”

That storm is the subject of the book Super Storm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, by Kathryn Miles. This is a 2014 book, consisting of 332 hard cover pages, and it is available electronically.

This storm affected nine countries and 24 U. S. States. 147 people lost their lives, from Jamaica to Canada. A million homes (more than half in the United States) were damaged or destroyed in an area the size of Europe.

The book covers the tracking of this storm from Sunday, October 21, 2012, until it made landfall just south of Atlantic City, New Jersey on Monday, October 29, 2012. It caused an estimated $36.8 billion in damages to the State of New Jersey, including the destruction of the boardwalks in Seaside Heights.

Preceding the storm’s landfall, and nearly 1,000 miles away, spray from a 20 foot surf on Lake Michigan crashed onto Chicago’s lakefront.

This book takes the reader into the operations of the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, and the author describes flights in C-130 airplanes with hurricane hunters from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Group. These airplanes sometimes fly into the eye of a hurricane to relay information to the NHC to assist in its tracking of storms.

C-130s are also used in rescue operations with the Coast Guard during storms, including Sandy, even with powerful winds and surging waves.

The heartbreaking days on the tourist ship “Bounty” are also described during its fateful voyage back to St. Petersburg, Florida, from its dry dock in Maine just as Sandy was forming near Jamaica. The “Bounty” was destroyed 150 miles off Hatteras with several lives lost before its survivors could be rescued.

The surges from Sandy, or any powerful storm, can rise up to 50 feet as in the Indonesian Tsunami in 2004. Unfortunately, surges, which kill more people than wind or other aspects of a hurricane, are almost impossible to forecast.

On the day before Sandy made landfall, Mayor Bloomberg, who just a day before had assured people that the storm would not be a problem, ordered the evacuation of 350,000 New York residents.

In addition to causing 40,000 Americans to become homeless, Sandy caused 30 foot waves in New York Harbor. The storm caused lights to go out on Broadway, and Wall Street came to a halt for two days. 750,000 residents in New York City were plunged into darkness; 7,000 trees fell in New York parks and more than 65,000 boats were destroyed in New York alone.

The Statue of Liberty, which had just gone through months of extensive repairs and re-opened the day before the storm hit, lost its torch light in the storm, forcing it to close again for more repairs.

In Manhattan, seawater poured down stairs and vents into subway stations, filling tunnels from their tracks to their ceilings. As if those problems were not enough, 11 million gallons of sewage flowed into flood waters engulfing New York and New Jersey.

Before it dissipated, Sandy, which grew to over 800 nautical miles, became the largest storm on record. In addition, as it moved north, it became part of a winter storm, causing even more discomfort to its homeless victims. This combination was also unprecedented.

While we may never see another storm such as Sandy, it will be long remembered and talked about for years to come. This is true in part because of the detailed descriptions of it and of the people who played such an important part in its telling, in this book. 