Superstorm Sandy has struck and it has struck hard. Millions of Americans and thousands of Torontonians are still without power. There has been intense damage to property. People have lost their homes to water and cars have been damaged because of falling trees and electric wires that dropped on them, resulting in fires. Schools have been closed. Colleges are scrambling to make up for the lost time to complete the semester in time in East Coast. Subways are flooded and shut down. New York Stock Exchange has been closed for days for the first time after 1888, that’s more than 125 years.
With technology at hand, people had recorded scenes of Mother Nature’s wrath. Some remarkable videos have surfaced showing years’ old trees being plucked out of ground and falling over. The spookiness left behind by the Superstorm is enough to cause jitters in people on Halloween. Superstorm Sandy has overshadowed 2012’s Halloween.
Superstorm Sandy has resulted in the loss of about $15 to 20 billion. Many people worked from home on Mondays, however by Monday evenings, power outages were being reported and companies could not communicate with their employees for them to work from home.
No one knows how soon can power be restored or when the subways will function normally or what impact will this Superstorm have over the long run.
Many people thought of Superstorm Sandy as a minor tropical storm that will pass over without much damage like Irene last year only to learn that they have not heeded to evacuation warnings and were, then, trapped in their water filled houses. At one point on Tuesday, 911 was getting more than 10,000 calls every half an hour. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to plead with public through twitter to call 911 in life threatening emergencies only.
As an aftermath to Superstorm Sandy, many small businesses are already worried about the impact of Super storm Sandy on their insurances. After Hurricane Irene last year and a blizzard, insurance companies shot up the insurance premiums for the small businesses in New York City.
In an already fragile economy where businesses are struggling, the shock of any increase in operational cost of business is hard for the businesses to absorb, and companies are left to either give layoffs or postpone their expansion plans. Given this, US presidential candidates – Barack Obama and Mitt Romeny’s – economic policies will be even more scrutinized by those who are affected by Superstorm Sandy in more than 15 US states.
