As Hurricane Irene churned over America’s East Coast this weekend, several people from the Uintah Basin now living there prepared for the worst, only to agree it wasn’t as bad as predicted.

The Category 1 hurricane hit Cape Lookout, N.C., first and weakened to a tropical storm by the time it reached new York City and surrounding areas early Sunday morning.

“It wasn’t nearly as exciting as they made it all out to be,” said Lindsay Prokopetz, 23, who lived in Vernal in the summers of her high school years. She lives in Arlington, Va., about a half-mile from Washington, D.C., and said power was out for only two hours.

Former Duchesne resident Jesse Merkley has been living in Norwalk, Conn., and working in new York City’s Upper East side for the past 2½ years. After the storm hit early Sunday morning he said, “it wasn’t nearly as bad as everybody thought.”

Merkley, 28, said when he left new York City late Friday night all forms of public transportation were shutting down for safety. as civil engineer for a subway company, he said it was “a little eerie” to see images on the news later that night of Grand Central Station completely empty.

By Monday, subway service in the city had been partially restored, but Amtrak service was still out between Philadelphia and new York on Tuesday.

Even though the storm wasn’t as dramatic as predicted, it also wasn’t completely tame. at least 40 people had died in 11 states as of Tuesday, most of them when trees fell onto roofs or landed on cars, according to The associated Press. Vermont

Air Force Col. Dave Hardy, a 1981 Uintah High School graduate now based in Chesapeake, Va., said he spent most of Sunday driving around making sure several of his 350 Air Force co-workers were OK.

“There’s a bunch of flooding and we’ve got about 400,000 without power in the local area,” he said. “I’ve seen several trees that just look like somebody came in and smushed them with a big hand.”

Hardy said his boss had been without power for 30 hours, as of Sunday night, and was having a “massive barbecue” so that food would not spoil.

Despite the loss of power, Hardy said crews have worked quickly to remove trees from roads and houses.

“You’d be amazed how fast people clean things up,” he said. “My house is all cleaned up and most the people in my neighborhood are cleaned up.”

“On Monday, we had an earthquake,” Hardy said, citing the Aug. 22, 5.8 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter in Virginia. “So, there’s a lot of people out here who are concerned about biblical references right now.

“I think they’re just waiting for the locusts to show up,” he added with a chuckle.

LDS Church missionary Stephanie Winterton, 22, of Roosevelt, wrote to her parents last week that she’d like to “experience a small hurricane,” before her mission in Queens, N.Y., concludes in October. Her mother, Lori Winterton, said the very next day the earthquake hit in Virginia.

In an email to her parents Monday, Stephanie Winterton said there was an eerie silence Friday afternoon and all day Saturday. once the storm came though, she said she watched it from the balcony of her high-rise apartment as the rain came down in horizontal sheets.

“It was just really, really stormy,” she wrote. “Bigger than any storm I’d ever seen.”

Gala Hamilton, the mother of LDS missionary Kelsey Carter of Hanna, who is serving in Washington, D.C., said she found out Sunday that her son was OK when a member of the LDS Church there contacted her.

On Monday, her 21-year-old son sent her an email about both the earthquake and the hurricane. he said when the earthquake first hit he was sitting in his apartment chatting with other missionaries and his initial thought was, “hmmm, somebody has one stinkin’ powerful washing machine.”

In his email, Carter said once they realized it was an earthquake they were all so scared that they made it down three flights of stairs “in seven seconds.”

He said that the hurricane didn’t hit as hard as they thought, but the consistent rain led to a flooded basement for one member of the LDS Church in his area. Carter went with other missionaries to rip out carpet from that house and clear out water that was two inches deep in some spots.

Marilyn Cooper, mother of LDS missionary Bradly Cooper, who is serving in the South Carolina Columbia Mission, said Sunday she was still waiting to receive an email from him. Cooper, who is from Roosevelt, had been serving along the coast of South Carolina. his mission president told his family that all of the missionaries had been moved inland for safety, according to Marilyn Cooper.

Caitlyn Partridge, 22, of Vernal, has been working as a nanny on the East Coast since 2009. She said when the earthquake shook, the mother of her host family was working at Rockerfeller Plaza. The woman said it was a little unsettling to be in a skyscraper and feel her desk shake, according to Partridge.

In preparation for the storm, Partridge’s employer asked her to make a last-minute grocery shopping trip Friday.

“The shelves (were) completely empty of bread and water bottles,” she said.

Another Vernal native, 20-year-old Aubree Felton, who has been working as a nanny for the past three months in Norwalk, Conn., said she had put off her “normal” grocery shopping all week because she “didn’t know a big hurricane was coming.”

“It’s crazy, people are all in panic mode,” she said about her visit to the grocery store. “It was just cram-packed with people, traffic everywhere, worse than it usually is.”

The store shelves were bare of mostly soup and water, Felton said.

On Sunday, she said her employer tried to drive around town, but “he couldn’t get anywhere really, because all the roads were flooded.”

Partridge, who stayed with a friend Saturday in Bedford Hills, N.Y., said flooding wasn’t as much of an issue there Sunday, when compared to the number of downed trees. Three trees surrounding the house she was staying in went down overnight when heavy winds came and the power went out, she said.

“Our house had the most trees down,” Partridge said, adding that the trees blocked every access to and from the house.

“All of the roads are covered with branches and leaves and debris,” she said.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm2pas7ll30&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Basin natives ride out quake, Irene – Vernal.com – The Vernal Express