Superstorm Sandy would have 'swamped' Scotland
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But for Wick artist Ian Charles Scott, who lives and works in New York, the past week has been an experience he does not want to relive anytime soon, as Sandy came ashore and ripped through the Big Apple on Monday, leaving at least 24 people dead and millions of dollars worth of damage.
Brooklyn-based Scott, who works as a professor at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, told the John O’Groat Journal that the storm, which claimed over 60 lives in total in the US, was the worst he’d ever experienced.
“The sheer scale of the thing, going from Baltimore and Washington right up to Ontario was just enormous,” he said.
“It would have just swamped Scotland. We’re just completely gobsmacked. You would have been a madman to walk out in it.”
Luckily, Scott was cooped up in the top bedrooms of his new house where he moved just two weeks ago. Moving to an area just two blocks from the East River where water from the Upper Bay area splits around Manhattan Island brought fears of flooding. However, most of the damage in the neighbourhood came from the treacherous 70 mph wind with fallen trees causing the biggest problems.
But other unusual problems were also soon brought to Scott’s attention as US president Barack Obama declared a “major disaster” in the state and its neighbour, New Jersey, as power was cut to millions of homes and widespread flooding wreaked havoc.
“One of my students told me that a friend upstate had sharks washed into a garden,” he said.
“And on 23rd street, which is right in the middle of Manhattan where I am most days, there is a seal just lying on the street.”
But in the life of a New Yorker it takes something as horrendous as a hurricane to really rattle the locals, said Scott.
“You do get immune from these kinds of hellish things here,” he said.
“Last Monday I was coming round the corner with my coffee and a woman threw herself off a nine-story building and landed on the sidewalk across from me.
“In the same area a week before, a young English football coach was stabbed in the stomach, they slit his throat and cut his ear off and left him to die.”
New York City and state bore the brunt of the hurricane which was downgraded as it hit land at the start of the week.
A huge 13ft tidal surge flooded parts of the city’s subway system and the storm was called the most destructive in its 108-year history by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman.
In other parts of the city a power sub-station was caught on amateur camera as it exploded and a hospital was evacuated.
Scott was out shopping just hours before all this happened and said he is just relieved he escaped the worst of the problems.
“We were more uphill in the old house so we were on tenterhooks as to whether we would get flooded in the new house as we’ve only been here two weeks,” the artist explained.
“Miraculously, this part of Brooklyn is not flooded but the wind damage has been tremendous.
“We had the same thing about a year ago with Hurricane Irene where there was this built-up hysteria but nothing really happened.
“So this time everyone was very complacent but it was the genuine article.”
Parts of the subway system were being reopened this week as the gradual recovery kicked in but for life in the boroughs it could take some time to get back to full strength.
“There are people walking about outside now to see the damage as the winds have died right down,” he said.
“It’s actually quite warmish but there’s been no subway since Monday, no buses, no trains – you can’t move.”
“There’s going to be a hell of a lot of rebuilding.”
