With talk of the upcoming hurricane swirling throughout her Long Island, N.Y., town, Jill Buckvar, a 2012 Syracuse University alumna, was playing a waiting game with the storm.

Buckvar spent the day home from work in anticipation of Superstorm Sandy, whose arrival was anticipated later that day.

By that afternoon, her house had already lost power and her grandparents had been relocated to a nearby hotel. The roar of a fire truck approached and Buckvar peered out her window to see a tall tree lying across the front of her neighbor’s lawn. Its trunk had been uprooted, taking with it a wide expanse of grass that had surrounded its base.

The fall of this tree was only the beginning of the destruction. Sitting in the darkness of the storm, all they could do was wait.

Fallen trees, flooded towns, weeklong power outages and long lines for gas are only a few of the ailments that have been felt by SU alumni living in the tri-state area. Some of the hardest-hit areas include the New Jersey Shore and Long Island, both of which are home to many SU alumni.

“There wasn’t really widespread panic,” Buckvar said. “It was dark outside and inside, and we didn’t see too much happening.”

The next morning, Buckvar emerged from her still powerless house to find even more trees lying horizontally across driveways, sidewalks and streets. Trees that hadn’t completely turned over were lying against wires, keeping the power outage going strong.

“About every house had a tree on the wires,” Buckvar said.

Brian Spector, president of the SU Alumni Association and New Jersey resident, said the noise and wind were unbearable.

“It was like a horror movie,” he said. “I’ve never heard or seen anything like that in my life.”

Once the calamity of the night had passed, residents were forced to deal with the destruction. After using cars as a power source to charge phones and other electronics, many were forced to deal with long gas lines to refuel their cars.

SU alumna Jessica Hurwitz, a Long Island resident, said dealing with the lines was one of the biggest inconveniences of the storm.

“Even at 6 a.m., the lines were still crazy,” she said.

There was a significant amount of community support, Hurwitz said, but the harshness of the situation really took its toll.

“People were helping each other, but they were also frustrated,” Hurwitz said. “There was no gas, no power, long lines for everything.”

Even when dealing with frustration, the SU community reached out to those in need.

“I logged on to Facebook, and my news feed was full of people saying, ‘I still have power, if anyone wants to come over, we’re more than welcome to accommodate you,’” Buckvar said. “It turned a bad situation into almost a fun sleepover.”

Published on November 12, 2012 at 10:27 pm

Contact Diana: dspearl@syr.edu | @dianapearl_