On Thursday the mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg said that the estimated death toll in New York was 38 and is expected to be larger. Canada even felt the impact of Hurricane Sandy when a Staples sign came loose in the wind, striking a woman in her 30’s and killing her.
Despite the losses of life I believe emergency responders did a great job of helping people in need. It’s impressive that out of eight million people living in New York, that such a small amount of lives were lost.
I think the reason the hurricane was handled so well is because of how it was communicated to the public. Every news station on television was warning its viewers about how severe Sandy was going to be, even calling it the “Perfect Storm” or “The storm of the century.”
Even after the storm hit the rescue crews were helping transfer 300 patients from the New York University Langone Medical Center after it lost power.
People were also keeping others around the globe up to date with hurricane Sandy through many forms of social media. Reddit had their Sandy section that allowed people to send updates and photos of the storm, Times Magazine was updating with photos from their photographers that were still in the city and many tweets on Twitter.
It’s sad that some people didn’t make it through the storm, but it could have easily been worse if people were not as prepared as they were. Even though there was an immense amount of property damage along the east coast, it can be repaired but the human lives will be gone forever.
