“Appliances and furniture can all be replaced, but my grandparents wedding photos can not,” said Meghan Attanasio, a student from SUNY Oswego.

Hurricane Sandy resulted in over 113 fatalities, according to the Los Angeles Times, and over 8 million power outages. Homes on the East Coast were destroyed last Monday. Before Sandy rushed up to the north East Coast, the hurricane formed over the ocean, ripping through the Bahamas, and quickly headed up the Florida coastline making its way up to New Jersey. It then headed inland continuing with its destruction and leaving the area with overwhelming flooding issues.

“My family was affected by the storm, and they had to evacuate our house that we live in near the shore, they had to head up to a higher elevation of land to seek safety,” Attanasio said.

The county of Oswego took action to prepare for the storm. “Our storm preparations began over the weekend, Oct. 27 and 28, as we received information on Sandy’s potential impact and disseminated it to agencies with a role in emergency response 911 dispatch, fire, emergency medical services, law enforcement and highway. The forecast indicated our severe weather would be high winds. By Monday morning we had connected with officials from National Grid, the American Red Cross, New York State and others with a role in emergency and disaster response to discuss response operations and how we could maintain communications during the storm,” Terry Bennet, from the Oswego Emergency management office said.

On Monday Oct. 29 Oswego State’s President Deborah Stanley made the decision to close the campus. Students received an email which stated that classes from 4 p.m. Monday, until 12 p.m. the following day were cancelled.

Hurricane Sandy left New York City crippled with power surges, outages and flooding.

According to reports from CNN had wind speeds at over 90 mph, leaving many things blown away and damaged.

Though millions of people lost power in New York City area, Sandy’s effect on Oswego County was not as devastating.

“Scattered power outages occurred all night between last Monday and Tuesday, and some came back on in a short time, but others took longer. About 4 a.m. last Tuesday, National Grid’s outage central reported 2,908 customers in the county without power. That number dropped steadily during the day until all power was back on around 4 p.m. that afternoon,” Bennett said.

Even though the damage in Oswego County wasn’t great, Oswego State students were still affected by the storm.

“I was unable to contact my family because they had lost power for about a week, and I didn’t even know if my family was ok,” Attanasio said.

Many students have faced problems at home which have not yet been resolved; this makes Hurricane Sandy an ongoing concern for Oswego State.