Hurricane Sandy, affectionately dubbed the “Frankenstorm,” led to widespread panic—and increased liquor sales—as it unleashed a blanket of destruction across the Eastern Seaboard.
The storm made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J. as a post-tropical cyclone on Monday night after pummeling the Caribbean and Eastern United States since Oct. 22.
Here in the District, wind gusts peaked at 60 mph while torrents of rain set a new precipitation record—3.85 inches in one day, according to the Washington Post. Overall, the D.C. area fared far better than New York and New Jersey, where the storm left millions without power, flooded streets and subways, and even caused a wind-fueled fire which destroyed 80 homes in Breezy Point, N.Y. In all, more than 6 million residents across 17 states lost power, with 2 million still in the dark on Tuesday morning, according to the New York Times.
Thanks to Pepco’s infrastructure improvements and preparations, the fewer than 2,000 power outages that remain of the initial 130,000 should be restored before Thursday morning, according to company Media Relations Manager Bob Hainey. Pepco was praised by local media and government officials for its quick response in comparison to its poor handling of the more than 1 million power outages caused by the derecho thunderstorm complex this past June. After that storm, some D.C. area residents were left without electricity for weeks. Throughout Hurricane Sandy, however, power remained on in all University buildings.
Georgetown University closed on Monday and Tuesday due to the storm. In an email sent Sunday evening, the Offices of Resident Life and Student Housing encouraged students to “remain indoors during periods of high wind and rain” for their own safety.
“We tried to be as regular and proactive as possible in our communications,” said Assistant Vice President of Communications Stacy Kerr. “Our commitment is to continue instruction and ensure the continuity of classes whenever possible. We have to take into account a lot of factors before we can communicate a decision on closing the University.”
On Monday, Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall and other Grab ‘n’ Go locations served students an additional 3,800 meals. The University encouraged students to visit these locations before they closed at 4 p.m., and take extra food in anticipation of worsening weather conditions. “We decided on Sunday to bring in additional staff to stay overnight on Monday in order to prepare to open for brunch at 9:30 a.m. the next morning.”
Rumors circulated Monday night that Department of Public Safety officers would be writing up students seen outside during the “shelter in place” period. This speculation was unfounded: “DPS did not write any citations. There was one student playing frisbee during the storm and they were advised by DPS to go inside,” said Kerr.
The Office of Student Housing brought in extra facilities staff working until 11 p.m. to address the approximately 300 complaints of “leaks and water intrusions” following the storm. According to a message sent out by the office on Tuesday, students should report any remaining leaks or damage to either their resident assistant or Work Management.
“We saw a lot of water damage— leaks, not floods— on the west sides of buildings from the strong winds,” Kerr said. By Wednesday evening, the facilities staff was “80 percent complete in addressing work requests. There are still some problems, replacing drywall for instance, which we will take care of over the next few weeks.”
With more than one week to plan, the University’s Emergency Management Team set up a command center in New South with representatives from the Facilities and Communications Department and Offices of Public Safety, Student Affairs, Emergency Services, and Student Housing. From there, the team monitored the storm nonstop beginning early Monday morning.
“We were very lucky. It was primarily proactive preparations that were happening,” Kerr said.
Georgetown and its students weathered the storm without incident or injury, but ignoring how lucky we were would be foolish. Though only a Category 1, the weakest hurricane classification, Sandy still packed a devastating punch, claiming 132 lives and causing an estimated $20 billion in damage thus far.
