To the people who are saying that Hurricane Irene was not that bad and to the commentators who say Irene didn't "measure up" as a disaster...what were you watching Saturday night, Comedy Central?
The truth is, Hurricane Irene was not that bad here, in my adopted hometown of Virginia Beach. Yes, we had sustained winds of 40-50 mph and yes, we had some very heavy rain. But there were also times Saturday in Virginia Beach when Irene seemed nothing more than a mild Nor'easter, with gusty winds and light rain. The damage in my neighborhood was nothing compared to 2003's Hurricane Isabel, the real measuring stick for severe weather in this area over the last two decades.
It was everywhere but here that we saw Irene at her worst, especially away from the coast. While Virginia Beach had occasional rain squalls, a swath more than 40 miles from the coast was hammered with continuous storm force winds and heavy rain, totaling a foot or more in Richmond, Petersburg, Suffolk and south into Bertie County, North Carolina. About half of the Hampton Roads area lost power during the storm, but in Richmond, more than 80 percent of the homes and businesses were in the dark Sunday morning.
And we need look no further than portions of New Jersey and New York and the entire state of Vermont to see that Irene was truly disastrous. I imagine the flood footage we've seen from Vermont is comparable to the Central Virginia floods in 1969 following Hurricane Camille, another benchmark disaster.
At least 40 deaths have been blamed on Hurricane Irene, including an 11 year old Newport News boy whose apartment was crushed by a falling tree. North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue says the storm destroyed more than a thousand homes in her state.
Maybe Hurricane Irene didn't wreck entire cities the way Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew did. But even as a Category 1 storm, Irene made her presence known to millions.
No comments:
Post a Comment