Extra Credit 4: Inside the Megastorm

I watched the documentary Inside the Megastorm on Nova the other day. When I came across this film I immediately wanted to watch it. My family lives on Long Island so although I was away at school when the storm hit, I still heard about the devastating news that was going on at home. Hurricane Irene happened last year and it did not hit as hard as the news told us so this time, many people did not evacuate when they were told to do so. This documentary really gave me an insight as to what happened to New Jersey, New York City and Long Island.

            A weather service in the UK predicted it would hit as hard as it did eight days before it happened. Hurricanes rarely hit the coast; they usually go out to sea due to a high-pressure system over Bermuda. Hurricane Sandy had many factors that contributed to it becoming this terrifying hurricane. The sea levels are higher, the sea temperatures are warmer, and the change in jet stream pattern and it collided with a Nor’easter. When Sandy was still a tropical storm in the Caribbean, it had 70 mph winds and killed 70 people. The countless stories of people fearing for their lives in this film was heart wrenching. According to the fire commissioner in NYC, there were about 20,000 calls made to 911 per hour. Nine million people in New Jersey and New York were without power. People used social networking sites like Twitter to reach out to rescue services when their phone lines were not working. In Breezy Point one hundred houses burned to the ground and fire fighters were trapped and could not respond to the fires. Even twelve hours before the storm hit land there was record high flooding. Waves higher than forty feet accompanied by eighty mile per hour winds devastated the East Coast.

            Hurricane Sandy took the lives of 200 people. It left eight million people with out power for almost three weeks and even burned entire towns to the ground. The New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time since September 11^th. As I watched this film I only imagined how terrified my family and friends at home must have been. The video images and interviews in this documentary are something you would see in a horror film. The worst part of this is that according to storm services and scientists, hurricanes in the future will hit less frequently but due to high sea levels and warm temperatures, will hit harder then ever before.