It’s been a hard couple of weeks for all of us. Superstorm Sandy affected everyone, even though at Syracuse University, we were miles away from the worst of the storm.

The scary news reports, shaky phone calls home and dramatic pictures simply didn’t help. We all witnessed some poor weather person test his or her fate on a beach. Images of multi-ton tankers washed up ashore on Staten Island or the vanished Seaside boardwalk only made everything creepier.

Sometimes, you didn’t know which ominous-looking photos to trust — and that was the worst part. The often-cheesy and mocked disaster movie paranoia suddenly became real.

During middle school, teachers would always put on “The Day After Tomorrow” during an easy day — that wasn’t just my school, right? The huge tidal waves and imminent danger seemed silly, just like every other disaster-filled flick with millions of dollars worth of special effects.

The monuments and shops that made New York billions in tourism would always be there safe and sound. They had to be, because weather like that just didn’t happen to the Northeast Coast. Crazy storms and violent hurricanes were for the South.

The worst anyone near the coast ever had to worry about was a random “snowpocalypse,” and even then it was nothing compared to what was happening “upstate.”

Until last week.

Pictures of the Statue of Liberty surrounded by 50-foot-waves — and a very official-looking news station banner, or a gigantic, black swirling cloud — eventually hit social networks. Once the now infamous pictures went viral, no one knew what to think. Unless you were in the area at the time, it was hard to recognize fact from fiction.

Eventually we found out that the photos were in fact fiction. One of them was lifted from society’s disaster film nightmare, “The Day After Tomorrow.” For some, like myself, that reassurance didn’t really help.

From the news coming out of New York City, these pictures still seemed almost terrifyingly possible. Once newscasters said the downtown neighborhood of Battery Park was under water or that tunnels and bridges were shut down, a submerged Statue of Liberty stopped sounding ridiculous.

Instead, the swagger we had about the storm quickly seemed absurd. This wasn’t going to be like last year’s Irene. Playing it cool about Superstorm Sandy stopped seeming like a viable option.

The aftermath still sounded like a movie. The City That Never Sleeps was dark. Neighborhoods like Breezy Point in Queens were ravaged by fire and rain. Areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island were flooded.

But, just like those water-and-fire filmed movies, things are going to get better. Lives and homes will be rebuilt, and power is slowly but surely coming back to everyone.

Now, if only we had someone like Dennis Quaid to help us figure everything out.

Ariana Romero is a junior magazine journalism and political science major. Her column appears every week. She can be reached at akromero@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @ArianaRomero17. 

 

Published on November 8, 2012 at 2:59 am