Antonia Schreiber is taking no chances on the next big storm.
The remnants of Hurricane Irene turned the 200-year-old building that housed her Catskill Mountains spa boutique into a muddy mess a year ago in Windham, N.Y. She managed to reopen in the same town within months â€" but this time on higher ground.
"If it happens once, history has a tendency to repeat itself, and I hope it's a long, long time from now," Schreiber said, "but that's not a chance I want to take again."
Hard lessons have been learned in the year since Irene sent sedans bobbing down rivers, swept away historic covered bridges, put millions in the dark and killed dozens of people along the Eastern Seaboard. Responses range from personal gestures, like buying a home generator, to statewide policy changes, like the tightening of utility regulations.
Many of the reactions are based on the belief that while Irene surprised areas more used to blizzards than tropical weather, future storms are inevitable.
"I think our question for Vermont is: What did we learn from Irene that we would do again and would put us in a better position with future storms in a climate-change future?" said Gov. Peter Shumlin, who scrambled after the storm hit his state Aug. 28 to help hill towns cut off from the outside world.
AP
In this Aug. 17, 2012 photo, a sign remembers Tropical storm Irene in East Granville, Vt. A year ago, Vermont was devastated by the storm. Hard lessons have been learned in the year since Irene sent sedans bobbing down rivers, swept away historic covered bridges, put millions in the dark and killed more than 65 people all along the Eastern Seaboard. Responses range from personal gestures, like buying a home generator, to statewide policy changes, like the tightening of utility regulations. Many of the reactions are based on the belief that while Irene surprised areas more used to blizzards than tropical weather, future storms are inevitable. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Close As Irene made landfall in North Carolina and roared up the East Coast, a densely populated corridor loaded with high-rises, suburban sprawl and pricey beach homes, officials in New York City and Long Island braced for storm surges and heavy winds by evacuating low-lying coastal areas and shutting down one of the world's largest subway systems.
The storm made a direct hit on New York City as a tropical storm, but damage there â€" and in other big cities such as Philadelphia and Boston â€" was minimal. That gave many Easterners the impression that the much-feared storm was a dud.
But in the days to follow, it became clear that the lashing rains had saved their most dramatic damage for 100 miles or more inland.
Tree-lined suburban neighborhoods in Connecticut lost power for days as branches crashed down. Surging streams in Vermont and in New York's Adirondack and Catskill mountains ripped up roads, bridges and homes. New York utilities replaced more than 300 miles of wire after the double whammy of Irene and, shortly afterward, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. In some cases, utility crews could not restore power for a week or more because the roads were gone.
Irene became the costliest Category 1 U.S. hurricane on record since at least 1980, with estimated total damage of $15.8 billion. The storm resulted in $4.3 billion in personal, commercial and auto insurance claims, according to Verisk Analytics, a publicly traded company that assesses risk.
Utilities, which came under scrutiny as crews struggled with extensive and long-lasting power failures, have already changed some of their practices.
Connecticut's largest utility, Connecticut Light & Power, has nearly doubled its tree-trimming budget, and lawmakers passed a bill that sets new emergency preparation standards for mass blackouts that last for more than two days.
Utilities in Connecticut pledged to do a better job informing customers of when the lights will come back on. Similarly, in New York, utility regulators this summer encouraged the use of text messaging and social media, such as Facebook, to communicate with customers.
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