This city's streets look post-apocalyptic.
Its buildings are desolate and dark. Power, and in some cases running water, isn't expected to flow here for another week and a half.
7-Eleven is the only store open on the main drag, and it's only accepting cash. A deli owner waits on an usually bustling Washington Street, handing out free sandwiches to anyone who was brave enough to step out into the flooded, debris-filled streets.
This is Hoboken, New Jersey, just days after Hurricane Sandy swept through and left 50,000 citizens devastated—and dumbfounded.
Everyone knew the hurricane was coming. No one knew it would hit this hard.
"Evacuate? Hmmmm not leavin my house!" one Hoboken resident who lived in a ground-floor apartment posted on Facebook before Sandy struck.
Later, her status message read: "Game over! The Hudson River is in my living room." Sandy filled her entire apartment with three feet of water and sludge. The home is destroyed.
We spoke with a more fortunate couple who rode out the storm from their fifth-floor Hoboken apartment.
In the end, all they lost was a car and the food in their fridges. But it hasn't been easy surviving Sandy without electricity.
Here's their story.
Sunday, October 28: The Calm Before the Storm (What Storm?)
Theresa and Michael Wright never considered leaving Hoboken.
The couple, who recently purchased a two-bedroom apartment a dozen blocks from the water, had been through a hurricane before—Hurricane Irene last year.
So they bought some drinking water, fruit and red wine—lots of red wine, because it's served best at room temperature. They safely parked their car in their apartment's garage, stacked belongings on top of the SUV's seats, and hunkered down for the storm.
"With Irene, we were overly cautious and we left," Theresa told Business Insider. "We took our car and everything in the garage with us. We went out to my parent's house and we had no power there, and then couldn't get back into Hoboken for a couple of days. Mike has a job he HAS to be in the office for [in New York], and we got stuck away, so we never even thought about leaving this time."
Monday, October 29: "We Never Saw It Coming"
At first, it seemed like the couple made the right choice. Theresa and her husband worked diligently from home on Monday, wondering why they weren't in their offices.
"It didn't really feel like a storm until late—maybe 6 or 7," Theresa said.
The Wrights lost power at 5 PM and ate a hearty meal in the dark that they had prepared earlier. When the lights came back on at 7:30, they thought the worst might be over.
But when the lights went out two hours later, they knew they'd need to get used to darkness.
The Wrights played Scrabble by candlelight to pass the time. Midway through their game, curiosity tugged at them, and they wandered towards the window.
What was once an empty street was now a waterlogged moat. Mysterious black masses, gunk, and oil raced over newly created river rapids, swallowing cars and trees whole.
"We never saw it coming," Theresa said. "It was a true flash flood. It came out of nowhere, so there was no time to try and save anything in our garage. It wasn't like, 'Oh, there's an inch of water, now there's two inches of water,' or 'Oh my gosh, the water is getting higher.' There was no time for anything like that. All of a sudden we looked out and there was an ocean."
It had hardly rained at all, but the screaming winds had dumped the Hudson River onto Hoboken's banks, and the low-lying, downward-sloped town filled like a bathtub.
The first time the Wrights noticed the river outside their door, it was three feet high. It had already swallowed the tires of an abandoned car in the street. When they looked 10 minutes later, the water level had risen significantly and was threatening the car's windows.
"Car alarms started eerily going off everywhere on the street and no one could go out and stop them," Theresa said.
"It was pitch-black and we were wide awake. It was hot as hell in our apartment; we were sweating. We just kept staring outside and watching the storm. The water was gushing like an ocean, flowing down the street in every direction."
Unable to sleep, the Wrights made their way into their common hallway, where neighbors were already pacing with flashlights.
They trekked down the stairwell but water stopped them between the first and second floors. It reached as high as the fifth step.
"No one would ever have predicted the amount of water that came in," Theresa says.
Finally the couple climbed into bed, but there was no sleeping. Theresa woke her husband at least three times out of fear. The apartment creaked all around her. It seemed to be made of straw as Sandy clawed at the roof, windows and floor beams with every ferocious gust.
Tuesday, October 30: Stranded
When the Wrights awoke, they headed towards their roof. There, they saw the entire town covered in at least four feet of water. Blue fingers of liquid spread wide in every which direction, creating islands of brick.
It was mid-afternoon before Michael could get into his garage to assess the damage to his SUV. The car wouldn't start, and the seats were covered in muck. The water had risen in his car beyond the cup holders, which held dirty water and oil from the night before.
Their vehicle was totaled.
The Wrights feasted on the remnants of their fridge—some chicken that had defrosted in the freezer after the power went out, broccoli, and rice. They raided their game closet and filled time reading magazine upon magazine, book after book. Each took turns powering down their mobile devices to conserve power, while the other one surfed news outlets for morsels of information about Hoboken.
"It's freaky when you're disconnected from the world," Theresa said. "We couldn't watch the news, we couldn't check out when we might get power back. I was concerned about whether or not we'd be expected to go to work the following day; we had no way of knowing anything."
Wednesday, October 31: Post Apocalypse
The next day, Theresa's New Jersey office was open, and she tried to get a ride to work. But when her friend tried to pick her up, he couldn't reach her. The flooding in Hoboken was still too widespread.
The water at her front door had receded, though, and she and her husband were able to venture outside for the first time in two days.
"It was creepy and it felt kind of like the apocalypse where no one had power and buildings looked completely damaged," she said. "It was just destruction everywhere and a million sump pumps going, trying to get water out of basements."
She and her husband walked for twenty minutes to catch a ferry on 14th Street—the only way into Manhattan from Hoboken. They waited an hour, a short wait compared to the crowd of people lined up behind them.
While her husband was at work, Theresa took refuge in her brother-in-law's Manhattan apartment. She charged all of her devices, logged into work, and picked up dinner—some Thai food they could heat up on their gas stove, which worked despite the lack of power. There was still nowhere to get food in Hoboken.
By the time they returned to Hoboken that night, most of the flooding in the center of town had receded.
Thursday, November 1: It's Been a Pretty Great Birthday
The Wrights had now gone more than three days without power.
Work suddenly became a joy.
"Going to work is a savior," Theresa said. "I've never wanted to go to work more than now because we can both go and charge all our stuff so every night we're fine on power and we can get on the Internet. Both of us can eat breakfast and lunch at work. We'll both shower at our gyms or friends' places, then Mike will probably buy dinner in the city and brings it home. And that's how we're eating and getting by until the power is back."
Theresa knows they could have fared far worse—like her neighbor, who recounted how difficult it was to change diapers in the dark.
Her 29th birthday was yesterday. Instead of going to a hair appointment she had scheduled and dinner with her husband, she took joy in the little things.
"Thanks so much to everyone for the birthday wishes," she wrote on Facebook. "Given the circumstances of the week, it's been a pretty great birthday—got a hot shower, blow dryer, Internet, and multiple coffees at the office."
"But possessions are just possession," Theresa added. "Some people had their entire houses ruined. All that really matters is that my husband and I are safe."
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