Day 18: Survey of Sandy Effects in Milford and visiting GE and other hangouts.

Pier in Milford Beach just after storm

We took the state highway 15 back to Milford and this time it looked ravaged on both sides. A number of trees were toppled and splintered limps and branches were everywhere. The fall colors were all gone with no leaves left on the branches.    Milford looked fine but some restaurants were close because of power outage. We still managed to get some breakfast in a Wendy’s and there was no unusual lines in the morning suggested the outage was not that bad in that area. Businesses were back to normal. We went to the beach to see the water levels and it looked high and rough. Roads near the beach were still flooded with water and a lot of properties were flooded. Evacuated apartments were coming back to life as people moved back in. 

GE office in Shelton

We drove around in city of Shelton showed Sheena GE office and the gym I used to go.  We tried to get Tom for a lunch but he was home still putting things together after the storm. We went to Bertucci's Italian restaurant where we often went out for team lunches. The place was quite crowded for lunch and everyone was engaged in some Sandy talk or other. They had a good local beer-Cortell's Old Yankee Ale- on tap and awesome pastas and pizzas for a nostalgic visitor. After lunch, we made random stops at places to kill time and also did some shopping for the Halloween. Our plan was to go trick or treat around in Quail Hill with Tara but now with the flight postponed, it does not seem to happen as we planned.

 

Milford beach apartments where I lived in CT

Considering our limited experience, our take on hurricane Sandy is not something widespread.  I thought the media hijacked it and blown it out of proportion.  Sure the property damage ran up to billions of dollars but minimum threat to life.  Alerts and evacuation warning were proactively in place and the causalities were mostly the people who did not pay attention or refuse to heed the warning.  With elections approaching, politics was evident and the both sides accusing each other to make it sound more severe than what it is.  The reality show for channels continued for several days and I started losing trust in anything they report.  Later I read in an article that nine months after Sandy, New Jersey hospitals witnessed a surge in child births.  About 20-35% jump compared to previous years.  Not to trivialize the storm, but looks like Sandy left some pleasant memories behind.