Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey and Family…..

Watching the national news this evening, the plight of the elderly stuck in high rises without food/water/heat/power just tears at the heart. These people are stuck in the chaos, and the brave first responders are attempting to reach them. And apparently, there is a Winter storm predicted for some time next week. With luck and such hard work hopefully power will be restored soon for people who are in their shattered homes and lives can be saved.

I haven’t had the heart to write anything about this horrific event. I find I am responding to this like I did with 9/11. Fear and a sense of displacement. Then I had a lot of anger, but who can get angry at a hurricane? A force of nature isn’t the same as terrorists.

However, friends from around the world have written and asked about my family in New Jersey. Specifically, they have asked about my 100 year old Aunt Jean. We were just up there in the beginning of September, for her Birthday Celebration, and if there is ANYONE who can come through a hurricane, it is my dear Aunt. This is a powerful woman, in command of all her senses and she takes no captives. But she does have power, in her very elegant suite in the assisted living complex. So, relatives have moved in with her, and I know she will soothe the great grandchildren and comfort the anxiety of the various adults. She is made that way, and I guess this is the reason she has gotten to such an age. Perhaps seeing the world over many wars, seeing the destruction of her Hungarian homeland at various times, and going back innumerable visits, well, perhaps you get a better perspective on something like a hurricane.

I don’t know, but I know I sit here, and my heart just sinks when I see the ocean cities of my youth and vacations just destroyed. The entire seaboard of New Jersey has been devastated from Cape May to the top of the state. NY is another matter, and so many friends and fellow bloggers are there and writing from a ‘boots on the ground’ perspective. Bless them for what they are now going through. (Thank you, Karin, of manicdaily.wordpress.com)

Talking to Don, a cousin , apparently there was some rank stupidity on the part of the mayor of Atlantic City: The Governor ordered an evacuation of all barrier islands or low lying areas for the safety of citizens, and this mayor, Lorenzo Langford, countered this by telling people to stay put. He didn’t want ‘his’ people evacuating.

What is going on here? Is this politics or stupidity? He suggested people could shelter in a school…one block from the bay. This school is totally flooded.

The people who have to answer for this stupidity are the first responders: rescue workers, firemen, police, etc. They are the ones who have to go down the streets in boats pulling people off roofs and out of second story windows. People should seriously consider what peril they put others in when they don’t evacuate during such events. But they don’t and apparently politics takes over in the egos of some politicians.

Power is still out to over 2 million New Jersey residents. Gas fires have burned 100 houses. Gas fumes and hissing are now common in these towns, and it’s like a powderkeg waiting to blow.

There is only time and the courage of people in New Jersey. Hopefully residents have learned that you don’t ignore the power of a hurricane. The destruction around them will make this lesson stick.

Lady Nyo

I haven’t a poem to end this entry, and poetry gives comfort. But the moon has been full this week, and I remember a poem I wrote about Japan’s disaster of almost two springs ago. I know it isn’t the same, but in a way, it is. And I know for some, a poem will bring comfort.

Is there a moon viewing party
In Japan tonight?
Destruction, sorrow
Covers the land,
Despair, loss
Regulates the heart.

Perhaps the moon presence
Is of little interest
And less comfort.
Perhaps sorrow goes too deep
To raise eyes above shock and debris.

Yet,
Her gleam falls upon all
A compassionate blanketing
Of the Earth,
Softening the soiled,
Ravaged landscape,
A beacon of promise
Of the return to life,
Beauty to nature.

Jane Kohut-Bartels,
Copyrighted, 2012

Tags: Aunt Jean, courage and recovery, first responders, Governor C. Christie, Hungary, Kohut family, macnicdaily.wordpress.com, Mayor Lorenzo Langford, New Jersey, poetry and comfort, politics once again.