American citizens are no strangers to natural disasters. Superstorm Sandy is coming and it looks like it’s going to have some far-reaching effects.
The once Category 1 hurricane hit the New Jersey coast and is forecasted to inflict serious damage throughout the Great Lakes region. Mass transit services all across the northeast have already shut down, airlines have canceled more than 8,000 flights and the possibility of severe winds reaching inland is growing more and more likely.
Superstorm Sandy is a natural disaster that hasn’t seen such extensive coverage since Hurricane Katrina. Sandy is currently sweeping havoc across the northeast while media outlets continue to provide sensational up-to-date news on its devastating path.
The extent to which mass media is sensationalizing the storm reduces the severity of the disaster to little more than just a bunch of facts that will probably just be used as interrogative ammunition on the presidential candidates.
With such a catastrophic event a week before Election Day, things are going to get sufficiently heated within the political body during an already volatile time in American history.
What is each candidate going to do about it if elected/re-elected? What does a disaster like this mean for the country at this critical juncture? Things are tense enough as it is. With Superstorm Sandy only in its beginning stages, there’s no telling just how much each candidate’s likelihood of election will be determined by how they address the tragedy.
At this point, it's not known how this is going to pan out, but if the initial reports are true, there is one guarantee: Superstorm Sandy is going to be big, and it's going to have impact.
How American infrastructure responds to this crisis, how political bodies react and how the country recuperates will all be highly mercurial areas of debate in the coming months. It’s still too early to analyze the country’s reaction as a whole, but from what’s coming out of news outlets and social networks, the superstorm is a source of discord for hundreds of thousands of people right now.
Amid all this, one of the most profound things to consider is that, despite the progression of the human race and its technological tools over all these centuries, nature still maintains a firm presence in every aspect of human life. The influx of information on Sandy shows just how far nature permeates into the human condition.
In a matter of days, this natural phenomenon has affected the social, economic, and political sectors of the American populous, affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
The country will have to try its best to survive this latest tailspin of events the best it can through whatever means possible.
However, to what extent the damage will be is yet to manifest. The best we can do is to hope that the staggering projected statistics are far off base, but at least we know enough to be prepared for the worst.
Reach the columnist at arjun.chopra1@asu.edu
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