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Houses were destroyed by falling trees and filled with floodwaters across Fairfield County. But a strip of beach houses along Long Island Sound in Fairfield, where many seniors from Fairfield University rent houses, was particularly hard hit in the October 2012 storm.
About 200 university students were unable to return to their houses for at least a short time after the storm, according to Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Karen Donoghue.
Fortunately, most were able to move back in by the second semester.
Though most of the houses have been rebuilt or repaired along that strip of beach, signs of the storm are hard to forget.
“I drive down there often to visit with students,” Donoghue said. “You’ll see there are still four or five condemned houses down there (whose owners) are still trying to work through what’s going to happen next.”
“Some people think it's easy to forget,” Donoghue said. “But there are still visible signs.”
After the storm hit, the university worked with students to find alternate housing. Some students found places to bunk through friends and families.
Others found homes through faculty members or even kind neighbors who were not affiliated with the university.
A few students set up an unusual living arrangement: They moved in with the university's president.
The Rev. Jeffrey von Arx welcomed four students displaced by the storm to live in his residence.
“To this day Father von Arx still speaks of them,” Donoghue said. “They were his roommates for about three, four months.”
After the experience with Sandy, Donoghue said the university is prepared for the next storm.
Fairfield University has purchased enough mattresses to house students displaced by a future storm, Donoghue said.
The university also upgraded its co-gen facility, which can produce electricity to power the university's residence halls.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast three years ago on Oct. 29, 2012, it was a Category 1 hurricane with top wind speeds of 85 knots.
Covering a massive 1.8 million square miles, the storm stretched from the Atlantic Ocean inland to Michigan and from Canada to the Carolinas at its peak.
Sandy caused more than $839 million in property damage in Fairfield County, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
More than 3,000 homes statewide were damaged in the storm.
Over 285 people were killed in the storm, including three people in Connecticut. Easton firefighter Russell Neary was killed when he was struck by a falling tree on Judd Road in Easton as the hurricane swept into the area.
United Illuminating and Connecticut Light & Power combined reported that they needed to restore power to more than 1.1 million customers statewide after the storm. Complete restoration took nine days.
Storm surges in Fairfield County reached more than 10 feet above normal at the storm’s peak.
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