Hurricane Sandy October 29-30, 2012

What a miserable week in the aftermath of the hurricane.  The last hurricane that did the most damage to the Connecticut coast was the Hurricane of 1938 or the "Yankee Clipper".  There are a number of books published about the storm of 1938 and a photo archive in the Connecticut State Library.

 I had plenty of candles for the days without electricity, plenty of water and food, and expended my cell telephone time on daily calls to the electric company and local Emergency Operations Center.  During these days without electricity, my cell telephone was often not functioning.  At many times, my calls "failed".  I even tried the main, non-emergency information numbers to the police department a few times and these calls failed, also.  Curiously, if I had a real emergency at home, and actually needed to dial 911, I am not sure the telephone call would have gotten to the department. 

Recently purchased a new Canon T3 Rebel camera and went out on Wednesday, October 31, 2012
(36-48 hours post Hurricane Sandy) to see if I could get some photos of the hurricane damage.  There was NO access to most of the coastal areas and the Connecticut National Guard was on duty in Bridgeport along the damaged coastal areas.  I had not seen the National Guard in the open with their weapons by their side since 9/11.  Needless to say, the presence of the National Guard was reassuring.

However, I did manage to get near the coast by driving to the old industrial access road to Pleasure Beach which is on the border of Bridgeport and Stratford.   There was not much obvious damage along the industrial road which dead-ends at the Pleasure Beach access bridge.  The following is what the old island access bridge used to look like: 

This bridge was seriously unsafe and was demolished years ago. 


On Wednesday, the storm water was high but the industrial roads were not flooded.  Here is my photo from the waterfront access area: 

The only beach/land area not covered by water was the farthest tip of Pleasure Beach Island as shown in the above photo.  There is usually a large section of empty land area between the photo spot and the distant island as shown in this old aerial photo provided for comparative purposes:

 An environmental boondoggle of development and remediation is the issue of flooding during storms and the deleterious effect of the floodwaters on the habitat..  This island area is important bird habitat and has been significantly affected by the high storm waters.  The storm surge and flooding washed away the history of the old-time amusement park at Pleasure Beach which once filled the foreground of the island.