During the last week of October, the National Weather Service made increasingly alarming predictions about the path of Hurricane Sandy. After causing deaths and severe property damage in Haiti and Cuba, the Frankenstorm, as some called this Halloween-week hurricane, was expected to travel up the Atlantic coast of the United States. The Atlantic coast experiences storms following this path from time to time. But this was not to be an ordinary event. As computer models further warned, after pummeling the southern Atlantic coast from off-shore, Sandy would turn sharply toward the mid-Atlantic coast and cause tidal surges, flooding and high winds as it made landfall.
Based on these warnings, government agencies and the private sector took precautions. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered evacuations of shore communities while authorities in Philadelphia and New York City closed their public transit systems. New York City released water from the Neversink Reservoir located on a tributary to the Delaware River to increase its capacity to retain stormwater runoff and to prevent spilling. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) warned natural gas companies to secure their sites. Many businesses closed operations and protected their equipment to avoid safety risks to their employees and damage to their facilities. These actions may have prevented many deaths, injuries and chemical releases.
