Hurricane Irene Hits East Coast

On August 20, 2011, the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season was formed just south of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. For the next nine days, that hurricane, lovingly named ‘Irene’ by the National Hurricane Center, ravished the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rica as well as much of the eastern seaboard of the United States, including Washington D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia with a scope never before seen in any Atlantic hurricane before.
The destruction stretched across five countries, and has so far resulted in 37 deaths, according to CNN. While sparing New York City, as some thought it might, the storm reduced parts of the Carolina and Vermont coasts to rubble and ruins.
“My mom and I have been waiting in our hotel in Massachusetts for days, and no one knows when it will be ok to start up school again, so right now, everyone is just apathetic just sort of hanging around in the lobby, waiting for news” says Dan Hutner, 15, a Junior at Northfield Mount Herman Boarding School, a highly esteemed academic boarding school in Massachusetts.
“It’s been raining like crazy here!” says Matan Hatsav, 15, Freshman and Elizabeth Irwin High School in Manhattan. “Nothing too terrible happened in the city like we were all fearing, but we have had some damage. Power is out, and the subways are closed.”
It is estimated that around three million people across the eastern sea board, are without power right now, but that is down from four million yesterday, so the momentum is already underway to get power back up and running to everyone without it. While some estimates in damages range in the million, no one has any way to gage these claims as the situation is still unstable and commercial travel is suspended in the regions that were the most hit. So right now, the most we can do is guess as we wait for more information to come out of the zones that were the worst affected.
Brandon Carrel, a senior here at Urbana High School told the Echo that “I am so glad my grandparents left, before the storm hit, but I still pray for their safety.”