Having recently spent two months in the Pacific Northwest I flew back to Baltimore on October 28. My flight from Albuquerque to Baltimore was slightly delayed and very turbulent, to the extent that everyone clapped when the pilots finally landed us safely on the ground.

I live in Edgewater, Md., which is only half an hour from the airport so I made it home just fine. I can’t say that for a majority of my fellow passengers though; in preparation for Hurricane Sandy shortly after my flight landed, every airport on the eastern seaboard closed, stranding people.

Sunday night was spent preparing emergency supplies and our homes for the worst and hoping for the best. At the beginning of July, our neighborhood got hit with a tremendous storm that left us with no electricity or even a way out of our driveways, due to downed power lines and even whole power poles for nine days in 100 degree temperatures. The storm in July made all of us very worried about Sandy.

Monday started fairly quiet but in the afternoon the wind and rain started to pick up. We lost electricity and a large tree fell over the entrance to our community, cutting us off from the outside world for about five hours. We all huddled up, turned our generators on and watched as the winds gusted up to 65mph. We also lost cable and Internet, so with my 12 year old son and my dog almost on top of me we sat and watched movies in the cold waiting to see which trees would fall near us. At about 9:30 p.m. we heard a crack and a large tree fell on my neighbor’s garage and across the road in front of our house. My neighbors are elderly so my husband, best friend and I put on our coats and took flashlights out to make sure their house was okay. The tree devastated the garage, which had also been hit in July.

Tuesday morning, the wind started to let up and we ventured out on foot to check out the damage. Luckily, because most of the large trees came down in July our property was spared. There were a number of smaller trees and power lines down throughout our community. Fortunately, Baltimore Gas and Electric was much quicker to respond to this storm and our electricity was restored by Tuesday night. My son’s school was closed Monday and Tuesday but reopened two hours late on Wednesday. I do have friends in New York City that lost everything so I feel fortunate and grateful that Sandy was just a scary inconvenience for me and my family. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those that weren’t so lucky.