It’s Them, and Maybe You – A Tale of Two Cities

Here in suburban New Jersey, we are just now getting power back throughout town. (As of yesterday—remember, remember, the Fifth of November—we were the town in Essex County that had the least restored houses.) A lot of progress today, with teams from Texas and Florida among those called in (which presumably left the NJ teams to deal with the major issues down by the shore).

By a fluke of (mis)transcription, my work number is getting calls from the Huntington (NY) School District.  Huntington is (per Google Maps) fifty-six (56) miles away, around the middle of Lon Gisland.

One of the things that has been happening is that the towns are in parallel: my childrens’s schools have both been closed since last Monday.  So has the Huntington School District. For the past two days, on two separate telephones, I have gotten a call saying, in short, “We have no power. No school tomorrow.”

Today, the calls were different.

For here, the grade school is open tomorrow.  For the middle school, power is still not restored, but alternatives have been found.

For Huntington, the message went roughly like this:

Power has now been restored to the school.  However, we are now anticipating that the high winds from tomorrow’s Nor’easter will reach our area before the scheduled dismissal time tomorrow.  Given the danger from trees and power lines that have not yet been repaired from Sandy, we are going to remain closed tomorrow.

Jersey Jazzman asked if his annual evaluation would include a “Sandy variable.”  All the talk from Lon Gislanders has been about how Sandy impacted the South Shore and how tomorrow’s Nor’easter will impact the North Shore.

Some areas of the Northeast were less affected.  Some are recovering.  And some—such as the middle of Lon Gisland—are getting the worst of both worlds.

Just to relate this to finance:  I really wouldn’t go long any insurance companies (or even reinsurance companies) just yet.