When Hurricane Sandy pushed flood waters to historic depths in New York City earlier this week, three students at New York University, or NYU, came to the mid-state to take refuge.
Here they found the comforts of home taken from them by the storm.
Tesa Burns lives in Dauphin. She’s an anthropology major at NYU in lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, she experienced the worst of Hurricane Sandy.
The rain, winds and storm surge pushed water to historic depths in The Big Apple. When transformers started exploding, parts of the city were left in darkness. Burns said she and her friends tried to remain calm.
“We live in the top floor of our building on the 22nd floor,” Tesa explained. “We could see everything from our windows. We could see the river advancing toward us. We actually saw the transformers exploding that caused the power to go out in Lower Manhattan. So it was pretty scary.”
Tesa says her father rescued her on Wednesday. She brought home classmates Kate Ladner of Canada and Bridgett Lopez from Miami.
Friday, they were riding horses at Prairie Fire Farms in East Hanover Township, Dauphin County. They’ve been relaxing, calling the ordeal ‘stressful’.
Shopping, eating out and watching movies have filled their days. They’re glad to still have cell phone service and texting.
Teaa says the worst thing was having to walk up and down 22 flights of stairs to get to the “facilities.” She adds that 48 hours without a shower was too long.
Classes are expected to resume as soon as power is restored. She thinks it could be as soon as Monday.