Thirty people are now dead and the economic costs of Hurricane Sandy are expected to surge past the $20 billion mark.
But as bad as things are, they could have been so much worse if wasn’t for these real-life heroes.
In our last installment of tipping our hats off to those who kept so many safe from harm, we salute the power workers, the rescue crews and the volunteers….but there are countless others.
Power workers
Most people were advised to evacuate from Sandy’s path of destruction, power workers knowingly went into the thick of things. According to the Daily Beast, more than 500 power workers came up from Alabama to assist in recovery efforts, and at least 150 came from the West Coast to help restore power.
The Red Cross
Vern Gillmore is the face of kindness and hope– the 70-year-old Utah man has been volunteering with his American Red Cross chapter for three years and was deployed Monday to help a small portion of some 50 million people who could be affected by the storm.
And as the East coast scrambled to prepare and respond to the destruction from Sandy, a crew of Indiana residents began a pilgrimage eastward to help. According to the Daily Beast, American Red Cross volunteers based in Indiana journeyed late last week to Harrisburg, Penn., where they began staging rescue efforts for the storm that was to come in the next few days.
Firefighters
Firefighters across the five boroughs rushed to put out fires, and rescue families and individuals whose homes were being destroyed. But many of those firefighters own homes were in danger.
Their chief aim? To protect as many as they could, regardless of their own personal danger.
For all the horror stories, and Frankenstorm has produced so many, there are also a million acts of kindness that should remind us all, that we are in this together….the real heroes of the superstorm are people who displayed unbelievable acts of bravery and put their own safety in jeopardy to save others.
What do you think?