Donna Sines Community Vision

For a hurricane named Sandy to bypass our beaches and roar into the New England states is more than ironic.  
Sandy’s perfect storm was eerily familiar to the fishing village in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Hit by a nor’easter and hurricane this little village lost the Andrea Gail, (actually built in Panama City in 1978) and her entire young crew of fishermen. The subject of ballads, books and a 2000 movie starring George Clooney, the Andrea Gail was last heard from on October 26, 1991 when communication was lost.  
Fortunately communication is one thing improved, but nature’s fury took more than 150 lives this October as well but one ship caught up in the storm didn’t suffer the same fate as the Andrea Gail. The Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members by helicopter October 30th. The ship was originally built for the 1962 film “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando, and it was featured in several other films over the years, including one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. The crew was trying to get the ship out of harms-way when 30 ft. waves and mechanical failure led to it taking on water.  
Unfortunately the ship’s captain is still missing but the efforts of the Coast Guard, conducting a rescue from the air, in the middle of the storm was nothing short of heroic.
An example of everyday heroes rising to the occasion happened at a health care facility.  Using flashlights to guide them, employees and rescuers at NYU Medical Center in New York City evacuated some 260 patients when the facility’s backup power source failed. Some of the patients had to be carried down 15 flights of stairs to waiting ambulances.
Four newborns on respirators were carried down nine flights, with nurses squeezing breathing bags by hand all the way down. NYU didn’t expect massive flooding, so failed to evacuate all of its patients before the storm, as it had in Hurricane Irene a year ago. But Sandy filled the hospital’s basement, lower floors, and elevator shafts with 10 to 12 feet of water, causing power failure. “Things went downhill very, very rapidly, and very unexpectedly,” says Dr. Andrew Brotman, “The flooding was just unprecedented.”
Not too far away a massive fire destroyed 80 to 100 houses in the flooded beachfront neighborhood of Breezy Point on New York’s Rockaway peninsula in Queens. With electrical wires dangling and chest-high water filling the streets, more than 190 firefighters converged to help extinguish the blaze.
The firefighters had to use a boat to rescue the people trapped inside the burning buildings. They pulled 25 people out of an upstairs unit in one apartment building, climbing over an awning to reach the stranded residents, carrying them downstairs to the boat.
I can only imagine the additional stories of selflessness and survival when the dust or should I say sand, finally settles in those communities so affected up north. Acts of kindness are now commonplace. People with power invite strangers without into their homes for warmth and safety.
In the city the never sleeps and people keep to themselves for the most part, neighbors will get to know each other better… something we can relate to in Central Florida having survived four hurricanes in 2004.
When Hurricane Charley hit Central Florida hard it was the heat, not cold, that we endured until the power was restored. Power companies from all over the country helped get our system rebuilt, up and running again.
They returned the favor when as soon as the coast was clear of Sandy, KUA along with other central Florida crews that included OUC, Progress Energy and FPL made the trek to communities and power grids decimated by Sandy. Those who climbed into trucks will not be living in the lap of luxury while in the Big Apple or surrounding communities. It will be long hours and adverse conditions.  So we may have some home-grown heroes of our own dealing with a freaky, end of the season, storm that passed us by and wreaked havoc on our country men.
Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN
Donna Sines is the executive director of Communty Vision.