What started out as Hurricane Irene later became Tropical Storm Irene and left thousands without power, flooded basements, shortened vacations, and a storage of batteries and flashlights that could last a lifetime.

     In preparation of Tropical Storm Irene, restaurants boarded up windows and people stocked up on everything possible. Grocery stores and home appliance stores were out of stock by the end of the week. Many people also invested in generators assuming that their power would go out and stay out.

     Generators were to blame for a house on Old Federal Hill Road in Jarrettsville, Maryland. When the power came back on, the surge protector did not trigger and so it caught on fire. It then caught the bed in the master bedroom on fire which resulted in the destruction of a home.

     “It was really sad watching my neighbors whole lives being destroyed…They spent years remodeling the house because it was an old school house, and now they have to start all over. I’m just glad though that the family and all their pets are were safe and are doing okay,” said junior Alyssa Kozak.

     More than 80,000 residential and commercial power outages occurred in just in Harford County due to the storm. Havre de Grace was flooded for over a week and this town received some of the worst damages in Harford County.

     Harford County was damaged by an excessive amount of flooding and power outages. Many residences lost power for several days as well as businesses and schools. North Harford High School was delayed 3 days due to the storm and school did not start until September 1, 2011.

     NHHS secretary, Lisa West, lost power for about 4 and a half days. She had power by the first day that school started for students, but she did not when the teachers first day began.

     “I had to heat water on my stove to take baths; I lost everything in my refrigerator and freezer. It was very boring at times so we played a lot of games like Yahtzee,” said West.

     Ocean City, Maryland, had its first evacuation since 1985 due to the immense storm. By the time it hit Ocean City, it was a category 3 storm. With 120 mph winds and more than 10 inches of rain, a beach town became a deserted mess.

     Phase three went into effect for the town of Ocean City at midnight of August 24 after the mayor declared a local State of Emergency. About 300 residents out of the 7,000 in Ocean City decided to leave, and were told that if they were staying, to keep inside and be safe. A total of approximately 2.5 residents and tourists were evacuated from not only Ocean City, Maryland, but other overly populated places on the east coast such as New York and New Jersey.