Sandy check in Wed Halloween...

[GailGoldie]

I can't sleep so figured I start today's check in.

Just read the tues one and someone asked about staten island - some parts are really bad. I know that.

We are without power in NNj but have a generator for our fridge, charging phones and iPads and right now have a space heater on (we r all sleeping in the living room still to conserve heat)

Drove around yesterday and our town has some bad areas but compared to the shore it is golden here. So sad looking on FB of shore pics. Devastated.

Likely won't have power for a week or more. Trying to make the best of it and count our blessings. Kids are bummed about missing halloween fun at school. It is hard to explain to 3 and 5 yo kids that they should feel lucky they still have a house and shouldn't cafe about Halloween so we will try to mAke today fun. Probably dress up and visit my sister and parents in town. Give them some fun too since we Are all bored out of our Minds.

3G is horribly spotty I guess from everyone using it. Hard to get info. Right now it is working for me I guess bc the town is still sleeping.

Hope everyone is ok and making due.

[mrs.spunky]

Power is on here, at least in my neighborhood (south-ish NJ).
I am awaiting word on whether or not the power is on at my office in Princeton.

UPDATE: no power at my office; awaiting update from boss.

One of our friends is staying with us at least through tonight bc his whole complex is without power.

[CloudBee]

We are in this random pocket that now has power and has decent cell reception. There are boats in the street and on front lawns about 2 miles from here, though. I feel like I'm living in a bubble. Especially because we got our fence panels back up and mostly repaired. At a glance we only see fallen limbs hanging from trees.

My office is without power, as is everyone else in my department (at their homes). I was the lucky one who put in hours of work yesterday from my laptop because it's our busy season and everyone else had their hands tied. Boss/my partner don't even have reliable reception right now.

My boss had 2 fires in front of her house and lines in her driveway still.

My husband's office opened today with partial power on generators. They have no phones or heat. There is also fire damage, but the stock market is open so they have to at least attempt functioning. Hopefully it's mild today with the temp.

[drloretta]

We're pretty much good to go here in MA. DH's work lost power for 2 days, but we didn't. So he got to hang out at home with us. It's all back to normal today.

[whitepicketfence]

Everything's back to normal here today. Only a few areas lost power during the storm and have since already been restored. Schools are back in session.

The city did bump ToTing to Saturday since it's still supposed to be rainy tonight. Our church always holds a Halloween party for the kids anyway so we plan to take them to that tonight. The weather for Saturday is supposed to be much nicer than today so it actually works out for the best.

[mrsw101109]

North Jersey here. I am on one of the only streets in my town to have power. I heard that's people are looting houses in a not so nice neighborhood of my town that borders Newark, NJ. why are people so mean?

Both of my husbands brothers lost everything in Staten Island. The water went up to the ceiling in the first floor. The other brother's house is raised, but they still had water 3 feet inti their first floor. They are in the Oakwood beach section for those who know the area. Dh's nephew and his wive have an apartment in South Beach, Staten Island. They also lost all their possessions and have no renters insurance.

[Deleted]

Central NJ. Power came back at 5am, never been so happy to have an early morning wake up call. I'm going to try and venture into our satellite office to get some work done today; hopefully it has power. If not, I'll do what I can from home. MH is working from home since his office is still without power.

We had to toss everything in the fridge, but our freezer was still frozen.

[vtdiamond]

Business as usual here in Boston. We had some bad thunderstorms come through last night that they said were still remenents of Sandy.

[justjen]

We were truly blessed in all this. We live in NNJ and never lost power. There was some flooding near us, but our complex is built on a little hill, so we were fine. I feel so lucky.

Do any NJ people commute to the city? Any idea when that commute might be possible again? I'm pretty sure my office is still closed, but I have a feeling it will open at some point before mass transit is fully operational.

Good luck to all those still struggling through this

[CloudBee]

I love my dentist. He just sent out a mass email telling patients his office now has power. He told people to come over to use his free wifi, and to bring power strips so people can charge their devices up.

[jenn248]

I'm in NoVA, just got power back on this morning (it went out Monday night). We didn't have any major damage though, so I can't complain.

Good luck to everyone who is still without power or dealing with damages!

[CloudBee]

Ok, I just received an email from our local spa, too. At first I thought it was saying the spa had power, and that you could come over to charge phones, shower, and spend the night.

Then I kept reading and read that the owners have power at their home, and you are welcome at their HOME to charge phones, shower, spend the night, or to stop by merely for a hot meal.

People are so nice.

[countthestars]

That's really cool of your dentist and spa, CB. I love hearing about great people.

[chessie]

Still no power. Drove to work to charge everything and take a hot shower. All the stores in my area are closed since no power..we were very lucky, lots of our friends lost their houses by the beach and beaten up the shoreline completely. Still flooding. I guess living without power for a few days wont be bad in comparison. We gotten a lot of down trees from it, and are very thankful no animals got out. Sucks nonetheless, DH and I have been taking rounds with the generator to run what we need to make sure the gas we have lasts for a few or 2 if you really need to. There is no ETA when they will fix our transformer or the cell tower in our area. All cell phones have no signal, so not like we could call our family to tell them we were okay until this morning..

[LoveTrains]

Oct 31, 2012 7:56:20 GMT -5 chessie said:

Still no power. Drove to work to charge everything and take a hot shower. All the stores in my area are closed since no power..we were very lucky, lots of our friends lost their houses by the beach and beaten up the shoreline completely. Still flooding. I guess living without power for a few days wont be bad in comparison. We gotten a lot of down trees from it, and are very thankful no animals got out. Sucks nonetheless, DH and I have been taking rounds with the generator to run what we need to make sure the gas we have lasts for a few or 2 if you really need to. There is no ETA when they will fix our transformer or the cell tower in our area. All cell phones have no signal, so not like we could call our family to tell them we were okay until this morning..

Chessie, I am really sorry. I hear parts of RI have been completely decimated. The pictures are awful and so sad. I am very lucky. Today is the first day back at work and many coworkers still don't have power.

[phoenixrising]

I was without power for less than 24 hours, but my electric company still has over 280,000 people they are working to restore power to. It's very random who has power right now. The hospital I work in has been on generator power, but we have been fine there. My big sadness is that my therapist's office is closed today, so I will not be able to have my appointment this week. Blah.

That said, we are SO LUCKY. There were very few deaths in the area from the storm, and I don't think there were many total losses. We have a lot of trees down throughout the area, but the flooding was minimal. It could have been so much worse.

I can't stop thinking about the people at the Jersey shore, as well as those people in the NYC/LI area that lost everything. Like that Breezy Point neighborhood. Yikes. And Atlantic City. Awful.

[gibbinator]

Oct 31, 2012 7:47:08 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

Ok, I just received an email from our local spa, too. At first I thought it was saying the spa had power, and that you could come over to charge phones, shower, and spend the night.

Then I kept reading and read that the owners have power at their home, and you are welcome at their HOME to charge phones, shower, spend the night, or to stop by merely for a hot meal.

People are so nice.

That's incredibly kind!

I remember when hurricane Juan hit here a few years ago and most rural areas of the province were out of power for 3+ days. Our local convenience store hauled out their bbq and it was free hamburgers to anyone that stopped by. they had a generator too so it wasn't like they were trying to use the meat before it went bad

[mbcdefg]

I live in Essex County, NJ. My block doesn't have power yet, but we took a ride yesterday and saw that other parts of our town, plus surrounding towns, have it. So I'm optimistic that we'll get it restored soon.

I was able to come into work today. MH's school is on a waterfront and that town is also without power, so he's out of work for who knows how long.

Our families and a lot of friends are in Hudson County on/near waterfronts. Pretty much none of them have power, and many of them had flooding. If we get our power back first, we'll start reaching out to people to see if anyone wants to stay with us until they're back up and running.

The photos of the Shore are heartbreaking

[Deleted]

I have never been so happy to be at work in my life.

We still have no power, no water, no elevator, etc. at home. Cell service is a joke. Getting to work without mass transit was interesting (I just got in) but I have to say that I'm really impressed with how orderly the whole driving-without-streetlights thing is.

I have no idea what is going on in the rest of the tri-state area because my internet access has been so intermittent. I have not seen any pictures.

Oh, and I look like a complete disaster (getting dressed in the dark is hard) and will probably pay $20 later so I can buy a day pass to a gym here in power-having midtown so I can shower. Showering is not MM.

[jessnpaul]

I'm also one of the super lucky in NNJ. We never lost power, but there's trees down everywhere in town and over 50% of the people in my town are still without power.

I told DH I feel like we live in a bubble. There's devastation all around us and I'm home with the heat watching my DVR. I feel guilty that we lucked out, yet we've been unlucky in previous storms so at the same time I felt we were due a little good luck for a change!

[dragonfly08]

We're fine here in NoVA. Never lost power and the roads didn't even flood as badly as I'd expected...most of the issues were due to downed trees and not flooding.

My parents and sister are in Ocean County, NJ. Cell phone service is still spotty although my sister got power back this morning. She does have some property damage, but fortunately nothing to the house itself. My parents are still in the dark and going a little bit stir crazy. The ILs are in the Princeton area (power out) and Essex County (with power).

BIL owns a house on LBI. We have no idea what he'll find once he can finally get out there to check on it. I'm not counting on it being good news, though.

[heliocentric]

We are in Trenton. Trees are down all over. We don't have power, but we have a generator that is making it tolerable. DH managed to wire it up to the boiler so we have heat and hot water now, too, which made a huge difference. We are doing quite well, considering. We even had several neighbors over last night for drinks and to get warm and take a shower and charge phones.

We don't expect power until next week, but a few blocks away got theirs restored earlier today, so we're hopeful it will come on before then.

I came into my job in Delaware. It doesn't even look like there was storm in this area. I figured there was no point in sitting at home. Plus I need to get gas for the generator since most stations in our area don't have power and those that do have long lines.

I am kind of out of touch with what's going on elsewhere, but it sounds like some places were really devastated. I feel so bad for those people.

[GailGoldie]

Our mayor updated the town today and said that we can expect 7-10 days without power from what he was told. I was expecting that... since last year my parents (in same town) were out for a week after the oct snow storm.

it sucks mostly b/c the kids are missing so much school - likely no spring break for them now... or more. They thankfully forgot that today was Halloween and we didn't mention it at all (despite my plans earlier to make it fun... we had fun- but nothing halloweenish).

I know we are very fortunate compared to much of the state. We are counting our blessings for sure. And learning a lot about what will be needed in a worse situation.

[murdock]

Lurker. Point pleasant here, we don't have a generator but keep using our cars. 10 to 14 days or more for power per the mayor. My work( a school in another county is out till nov. 12th due to building damage and power)

lots of damage, but so far reports that people are basically ok due to listening to evac orders. Stores, that happen to be open, are low on food with no notice of shipments, we need gas( like everyone else). Waited 3 hours today, booo.

everyone is listening to that one radio station to find out where to get stuff. there's a curfew and id check to cut down on crime in our town. But that seems superfluous so far.
Take care, and stay safe!!!