Remembering Hurricane Irene: One Year Later

It's hard to believe that it's already been one year since Hurricane Irene battered the East Coast. I remember the event particularly well due to the circumstances that surrounded it.

I was set to go to a wedding that weekend, however with the storm was set to hit our area late Saturday night it was postponed. I soon got word that I would have to be at the radio station Sunday morning, but since no one knew what state the roads would be in it was decided that Bob Levy and I would sleep at the station Saturday night.

This wasn't the first time I had to call my office a bedroom (Bob and I had a station sleepover the previous winter during one of the snowstorms), but that didn't make the experience any easier. The thing about sleeping at the station is that you're never really sleeping. Case in point: it was decided that we should get Bob on the air Saturday night to take calls, give people any information we had and to just let people know that we were there. A few hours later exhaustion kicked in. We signed off and got a few uncomfortable hours of sleep before waking up and hitting the airwaves for the better part of the morning, fielding calls from residents of the community.

We got calls of various instances of home damage: trees falling, minor flooding and massive power outages. However, it could have been a lot worse. Through planned evacuations and overall preparedness, our area avoided a potential catastrophe and a year later New Jersey can look back at Irene and see a success story.