By Aaron Keebaugh
Millions of people along the East Coast braced for impact as Hurricane Sandy churned over the Atlantic and slowly drove its way into southern New Jersey Monday night.
The massive storm—dubbed “Frankenstorm” in the national media—brought tropical storm-force winds, rain, and even snow to many of the Eastern states, spanning over 1,100 miles in diameter from Maine to South Carolina.
Sandy left a trail of devastating flood waters and power outages in its wake, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes and businesses in coastal New Jersey and New York City, the hardest-hit areas.
Though out of the storm’s direct path, Revere suffered some significant damage. Tuesday morning, Dept. of Public Works Superintendent Donald Goodwin said there was some flooding on Mills Avenue and some space flooding on River Road. In addition, Winthrop Avenue experienced some flooding as well, though the flood gate there prevented the area from even more saturation from rising water, Goodwin said.
The biggest problem in Revere, he went on to say, was the wind, which, due to its speed and consistency, felled between 75–80 trees on Monday.
The fallen trees and wind caused power outages throughout the city, and Squire Road experienced a long-term power outage when the wind ripped some power lines from the pole, Goodwin added
A transformer explosion Tuesday morning at North Shore Road and Kimball Avenue knocked out the power for residents from Shirley Avenue to Oak Island, Fire Chief Doherty noted in an email.
The winds from Hurricane Sandy caused over 1,000 power outages around the city, which affected thousands of residents, according to National Grid. On Tuesday morning the company was still working to fix 140 power outages, Doherty stated.
Tuesday afternoon National Grid’s Power Outage Map revealed that Revere had 27 power outages. The southwestern part of the city along Route 1 experienced nine outages that affected almost 3,500 customers in the area.
Wednesday morning National Grid released a note stating that the company had restored power for 180,000 of its customers and plans to have all restoration work completed by Friday.
The damage aside, the storm could have been a lot worse for Revere.
“It was a typical nor’easter for us, actually,” Goodwin said, adding that the city’s emergency personnel—including Police Chief Cafarelli and Fire Chief Eugene Doherty—handled the storm extremely well. “It was a well-organized execution of our emergency management plan,” Goodwin concluded.
The emergency team met with the DCR and state police to work out plans for the storm long before Sandy touched Revere’s shores. “We were well-prepared for the storm,” Chief Cafarelli said. “We were all on the same sheet of music. We fared better than others on the Eastern seaboard.”