A recent photo of the New Jersey coast shows a baby blue sky with puffy, white clouds strewn across it. The sky is accented by the ocean’s gentle waves, which roll delicately across the frame to caress the sand. It’s almost possible to feel the crisp, salty breeze whip across your face, awakening you to the cool, fall air — and to the giant, mangled roller coaster nesting a few feet from the shore.

The roller coaster, shown on the Los Angeles Times’ website, was a ride at the Casino Pier amusement park. When Hurricane Sandy tore through the East Coast last month, the pier was ripped apart and the coaster assigned to its new location. Despite Hurricane Sandy’s geographical distance from California, the hurricane has personally affected many students on Biola University’s campus.

Biola students may not be observing the situation from as far as some, but three students who come from the East Coast share a similar thread of a deeper appreciation of home after watching Hurricane Sandy from California.

A sense of helplessness

Freshman kinesiology major Alena Casey hails from Duxbury, Mass. Massachusetts’ residents felt “relief that [the] storm wasn’t worse,” according to an article on the NY Daily News website. Casey seems to share this sentiment as her family experienced only mild damage in the form of a power outage.

A recent article from the New York Times called “Tied by Heartstrings to Calamity” states: “When Americans living abroad watch a disaster unfold from afar, many struggle with a severe case of homesickness and a profound sense of helplessness.”

Although East Coast students at Biola aren’t in another country, they still seem to be experiencing some of these same emotions.

“If [my home] was in a place that got hit harder, I would want to be there,” Casey said.

While Massachusetts experienced 400,000 power outages, New Jersey ended up with 2.7 million, according to a NY Daily News article.

"You want to be with your family during hard times."

As New Jerseyans, freshman undeclared major Olivia Murphy and junior business major Michael Arthur felt a substantially higher level of worry than Casey.

Murphy says her parents had to deal with gas rationing and power outages, while her older sister Holly, a New York City resident, was forced to walk as many as 40 to 50 blocks when public transportation became unusable due to flooding.

“I’ve been homesick for a while,” Murphy said. “You’d think I wouldn’t want to go home, but you want to be with your family during hard times.”

While Murphy predicts it will be weird for her to return to the shore towns she always visits since everything will be rebuilt, Arthur knows visiting the shore will be different for him. Arthur’s grandmother owns a beach house used by the family in Ortley Beach, the place recently nicknamed “Ground Zero” by the Department of Transportation according to examiner.com. This website went on to say that Ortley Beach experienced more damage than the neighboring town of Seaside Heights, which was estimated to have 90% of its properties damaged.

Sympathy from fellow students

“We’ve seen pictures and we know that the first floor [of our beach house] is damaged and needs to be replaced — and part of the deck is damaged and gone,” Arthur said. “Our surrounding neighbors — some people lost their houses.”

At this time, Arthur is unsure when his family will be able to travel to their beach house. Both Arthur and Murphy agree that Biola students have been sympathetic once informed of the extent of the storm’s destruction.

“It’s just weird being all the way out here when our home’s in shambles,” Arthur said.