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Superstorm Sandy inflicted havoc and heartache throughout the Northeast, hitting the Big Apple and its surrounding coastal towns hard.

The 2012 superstorm known as Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc beyond the Eastern Seaboard and reached Northeast Ohio as well, with heavy rain, wind gusts of nearly 70 miles per hour and waves on Lake Erie reaching 15 to 18 feet.

Events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were unlike any weather disasters before. They showed the world who suffers the most from the impacts of extreme weather: low-income families and communities of color.

When I left school, I never wondered whether my apartment in New York was vulnerable to storm surges, but my three daughters have to consider the realities of extreme weather and how it may destabilize communities around the globe.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation.

As you know, Hurricane Sandy has affected thousands of families, leaving them without electricity, without household goods and, in the worst cases, without a home.

Hurricane Katrina was the storm of the 21st century. It devastated an area the size of Great Britain. More than 1,800 Americans died. Three hundred thousand homes were destroyed. There was $96 billion in property damage. I served on the Louisiana Recovery Authority. I saw Congress write one big check and then skip town.

The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.

Those who remember New York in the 1970s, as I do, look back on a city that had hit a very rough patch - decaying, bankrupt, and crime-ridden. But fun.