Hurricane Irene: Little damage to Philadelphia suburbs (ContributorNetwork)
When we fell asleep in a Philadelphia suburb on Saturday night, we didn't know what we would find when we'd wake up. The mayor had declared a state of emergency in the city for the first time since 1986, and the news media advised residents to prepare for long periods of no power.
My husband and I had spent two days preparing for the emergency: stocking up on food, water, and supplies for us and our toddler. We didn't expect flooding, since our street is on a hill, but we have had problems with power outages during previous storms and feared this one could be longer than most.
Imagine our delight when we woke up to discover we still had power. Despite our fears about a tree across the alley from us, it stayed up and didn't even drop a branch.
We turned on the local news to find out about the fate of our neighbors. Some, we learned, were not so lucky. Darby Creek overflowed its banks, flooding MacDade Avenue in Darby. According to the Delaware County Times, all told, 900,000 people were without power in the greater Philadelphia region and in Delaware.
Most of my friends reported no problems, although I know some people got water in their basements. As of late afternoon, my husband was still trying to figure out whether SEPTA would be running the next day and, more importantly, whether there was flooding near his place of work.
The state of emergency in Philadelphia was lifted at noon, and in the mid-afternoon, I ventured out to see what I could find. Our neighbors in nearby East Lansdowne had fared fairly well, with only minor damage visible on the streets I walked. There was lots of leaf litter strewn across streets and sidewalks, but very few larger branches and no signs of severe damage to property. It would have been dangerous to be walking the streets in the early hours of the morning, when the winds were at their worst. No doubt, you would have been pelted with leaves and small branches.
On my journey, I did see a couple larger branches, fallen near a yellow sawhorse placed by the East Lansdowne Police Department. The rest of the tree, however, looked sturdy. The convent at St. Cyril's School in East Lansdowne had a drainage pipe askew, and on Baltimore Avenue, the sign for the American Appliance warehouse, which has been empty since I moved to the area in 2001, had been damaged by the wind.
The skies were still gray, with a fine mist of rain occasionally spraying me. Traffic seemed to have resumed its normal flow.
If you only walked through this small neighborhood, you'd never know a hurricane had come through.
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