Picking up the Pieces
milhayser | September 14, 2011
Natural disaster struck twice last month on the east coast of the United States: first, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake rattled windows from Atlanta to Boston, and then a waning hurricane whirled all the way to New York City and on to Canada as a tropical storm. The temblor caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, but the storm caused billions, and killed dozens of people. Sharon Astyk provides a firsthand view of the damage in upstate New York, where the storm turned her farm into a swamp, her creek into a raging torrent, and her locust trees into goat fodder and firewood. She…