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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
While most Yellowknifers were glued to their TVs and computers on Oct. 29 when Hurricane Sandy walloped the east coast of the United States and parts of Canada, there was one Yellowknife resident watching the howling winds of the storm by candlelight from the 16th floor of a Manhattan apartment building.

Ben Webber, assistant director of programs and standards with the Department of Transportation's airports division, had quite the trip to New York City to visit his daughter when Hurricane Sandy struck. - Katherine Hudson/NNSL photo

Ben Webber, who works for the Department of Transportation, was in Ottawa on business and decided to hop on a flight on Sunday, Oct. 28, for New York City to visit his daughter. He knew Hurricane Sandy was on her way, but Webber, originally from Texas, had been through his fair share of hurricanes and would have rather been with his daughter than in Yellowknife worrying about her.

Webber's flight was one of the last to fly into LaGuardia Airport that night. Sandy hit with full force on the afternoon of Oct. 29. A few hours later LaGuardia's runways were overflowing with water, causing flights to be grounded for several days.

"We were sitting down watching the news, watching the storm come in, and the lights blinked a couple of times and then they went out," said Webber. It was about 8:30 p.m.

"When the power first went out, it took about 30 seconds until you saw flashlights in the windows of all the buildings around," he said.

Webber cracked open the window of the 17 Street building a little to feel the wind's power.

"It was tremendous wind force out there," he said.

On Oct. 30, Webber saw some of the storm's havoc - lower Manhattan was in darkness. Trees were down in the middle of the streets and cars were "parked" haphazardly due to flood water moving them throughout streets and parking lots.

No electricity meant no water, Webber found out. Pumps are needed to move the water to the upper floors of many of New York City's highrises. There was no heat, either. Webber's daughter did have a natural gas stove so cooking was, thankfully, a possibility, he said.

Webber's daughter works as a resident psychologist at Beth Israel Hospital which was running on back-up generators. To help out while his daughter and son-in-law were at work, Webber carried five-gallon jugs of water up the 16 flights of stairs to the apartment in complete darkness and went on a hunt for a flashlight and battery-operated radio.

"It's really challenging to find flashlights and battery-powered radios in New York when half-a-million people are looking for it," chuckled Webber.

"There were very few stores that were open in the area because there was no power. A corner store was open and candles were lit throughout the store ... It was really eery to walk around in this great big city with highrise buildings and everything is completely black. It was like one of those scenes out of a science fiction movie after human beings have been destroyed," said Webber.

The power was out from 37 Street down towards Wall Street - about one-third of Manhattan was without power.

"On (Oct. 31) I decided, heck, they got power at the other end of New York, so I'll grab the bus real quick and head up there," said Webber. The buses were all free since the subways were out of service. Many of the tunnels had flooded due to the storm surge. Almost nine million people use the subways daily, and all of a sudden, these people were trying to "stuff themselves onto the buses," said Webber.

"They were just packed like sardines."

There were no traffic lights for about 40 blocks. It took Webber two-and-a-half hours to travel 20 blocks. Once he got off, he walked back home.

His daughter made reservations for him to shower at Beth Israel Hospital - in the dark - on Oct. 31. It was Webber's only shower other than a shallow bath he made himself Nov. 2 by heating up water in the apartment. The power came back on in his daughter's apartment that night, but water and heat took a few more days.

Webber's flight left the damaged city on Nov. 3. He did get to experience a bit of New York's culture - a dinner show on Broadway. Although it was a different type of New York experience, he said he realizes other people had it much worse.

"It was inconvenient for us. I got a lot of exercise, more than I ever expected, but there were other people who were affected far worse," he said, pointing to the more than 100 homes in Queens burned to the ground, and the almost 200 fatalities in North America and the Caribbean.

"Mine is kind of an adventure story."

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