I live a few miles from ground zero at the jersey shore and it was a hell of a ride that night. We lost 2 huge trees in our yard, one of which snapped in half and fell across our driveway pulling all of the power lines and fios down to the ground in the process. The other fell a few inches from my car.
We lost power for 9 days and internet/phone for another 4 or 5 after that.
Before the storm we prepared pretty well. I cleaned and sanitized all of my brewing equipment and filled 2 5gal buckets with clean water (capped with airlocks). I bought two 20lb bags of ice and filled my mash tun cooler with beer
We bought canned goods and other foods we knew we could cook on our 2-burner propane camping stove and my wife had 2 full rain barrels of water outside.
Since we have a well we lost water/heat when the power went out so we basically camped in our backyard the whole time. It was kinda fun for the first 3 or 4 days! We used my floor burner and boil kettle to heat up rainwater for washing dishes and such, then would use that leftover water to flush the toilets. We had quite a system going.
It did get really cold at night but we had a firepit outside and luckily our friends dropped off extra firewood during the week. We had that fire going almost non-stop for the whole 9 days. We spent our nights talking and playing card games by candle and flashlight and i think it really put things into perspective for my son who was having internet- and videogame-withdrawal almost immediately and thankfully he took to playing my drums and riding his skateboard the whole week.
I've seen alot of amazing things that people have done for each other here and the community has really pulled together to help, but on the flip side I've seen aholes selling $100 generators out of the back of their trucks for over $1,000 each and people cutting in line at the gas station just to save 15min of wait time. There are also investigations going on for price-gouging from gas stations, hotels, towing companies and other services.
A friend who is a real estate agent was telling us how people who own summer homes down here are now renting them to people who lost their houses but at 5-10x the normal
summer rental rates, which is just absolutely ridiculous.
I'm just happy all of my family and friends are alive and safe, and that's enough for me!