All in all, we lucked out.
Northeast Pennsylvania bid good riddance to Sandy on Tuesday as the rainy, windy remnants of the devastating East Coast superstorm finally moved on, leaving tens of thousands of people in the region with no electricity but otherwise largely unscathed.
"It's hard to say you're lucky when you have thousands of households without power, but it could have been much, much worse," Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O'Brien said.
That seemed to be the prevailing theme in the hours after the storm raked the region with high winds that uprooted trees and brought down power lines but produced no significant flooding as the heaviest rain fell to the south and west.
One fatality - an 8-year-old boy who was killed by a falling tree in Susquehanna County - was blamed on the storm.
Most local government offices that closed Tuesday in anticipation of Sandy were expected to reopen today, as were many area public and private schools, including local colleges and universities. Public schools that closed will be required to make up the days missed, according to the state Department of Education.
Some people were counting their blessings even as they added up the damage.
On Summit Avenue in Clarks Summit, Cindy and Joe Best were thankful that their century-old oak tree fell away from their house.
Had it fallen toward their home, it would have likely smashed through their bedroom, where the couple was sleeping when the tree came down Tuesday at 2 a.m.
"If it went the other way, we wouldn't be talking," Mrs. Best said.
Instead, the tree fell across the end of the quiet dead end street, taking out a power line and slightly denting a neighbor's pickup truck parked across the street.
At 12:30 a.m., two spruce trees fell across Harding Street in Glenburn Twp., one onto the Harding family's house and the other onto a silver maple tree in the family's backyard.
The trees, one of five planted in a row, helped provide privacy from nearby Routes 6 and 11. Fearful the wind might topple the remaining trees, the family spent the rest of the night on the far side of the home.
"It was a sleepless night," Tim Harding said.
The American Red Cross closed its four emergency shelters in Lackawanna County, along with shelters at Susquehanna Community School District in Susquehanna County and Tunkhannock Area High School in Wyoming County.
All six shelters opened Monday afternoon, but only the Tunkhannock facility saw use. Kim Hess, Red Cross readiness and response manager, said about 15 Wyoming County residents were evacuated to the shelter Monday night because of the threat of flooding.
Shelters in Luzerne County also saw some use. Forty residents of the High Meadows apartments in Dallas Twp. were forced to leave home Tuesday because of power outages that left residents with no heat and, according to resident Alda Marinetti, no fire alarms.
Most residents went to stay with relatives. About nine planned to stay at the Dallas Middle School, where the American Red Cross operated a shelter.
Dozens of other displaced residents took shelter Tuesday night at GAR Memorial Junior/Senior High School, Hazleton High School and Luzerne County Community College.
At its peak, the GAR shelter in Wilkes-Barre had taken in 37 people, said volunteer Barbara Stahl.
"If it gets colder, and they have no power, we might get more," Stahl said.
At the peak of power outages, more than 38,200 customers in Luzerne County lost power, utility officials say. The Back Mountain area was hit hard by the storm, accounting for more than 11,000 of the total outages. While residents there were dealing with the aftereffects of the storm, many officials breathed a sigh of relief that there was much less damage than after Hurricane Irene in 2011.
"I know some people sustained damage, but we were very lucky," Kingston Twp. Manager Kathleen Sebastian said, noting power was restored to most township residents by mid-afternoon and two roads affected by flooding and fallen trees had reopened. "Having Irene so fresh in our mind from last year, I think we were more prepared."
In Wayne and Pike counties, where more than 50,000 homes and businesses were still without power Tuesday afternoon, emergency management officials were evaluating whether to open shelters.
For most people in Pike County, a shelter would be a last resort, county EMA director Roger Maltby said. They would try first to stay with family or friends.
"I'll be quite honest with you," Mr. Maltby said. "The long-time residents of Pike County are generally very, very resilient. They have learned over the years that the power goes out and you have to learn to take care of yourself."
The sentiment was much the same in Wayne County, said chief clerk Vicky Botjer, who was acting as EMA spokeswoman.
"As of now, everybody is picking up and being pretty self-sufficient," she said.
Mr. Maltby said it could be a week or more before electricity is restored in some areas, which will test that self-reliant resolve.
"If they didn't like the idea that the power was out for an extended period of time after (Hurricane Irene in 2011), they are probably really not going to like this one," he said.
In Monroe County, where outages affected almost 70,000 households, the Office of Emergency Management urged residents to stay off the roadways to allow emergency responders and road crews time to clear the highways of downed trees and power lines.
Gov. Tom Corbett announced the state opened a mega shelter Tuesday afternoon at East Stroudsburg University and another shelter at West Chester University to house New York and New Jersey residents displaced by the storm. The governor later said officials from those states don't believe they will need to send any residents to those facilities, although the shelters will be kept on standby for a day in case anything changes. The ESU shelter might take some Monroe Co. residents who have lost power.
The state Department of Transportation's incident command center in Dunmore remained in operation Tuesday.
Spokesman Michael Taluto said the department's biggest issue was the "cleanup of debris and removal of debris from roads." As that work progressed, various highways that had been closed due to fallen trees or wires were reopened.
However, a few were not expected to reopen until today, including Route 107 in Lackawanna County, according to PennDOT. It was closed in both directions between Route 407 and Bassett Lake Road in Benton Twp. due to a downed tree.
Lackawanna, Luzerne, Susquehanna and Wayne counties each had several roads closed due to the storm, although Pike County had the most.
In Scranton, storm damage centered mainly on downed trees, limbs and wires, and the Department of Public Works was busy cleaning up debris Tuesday.
Trash collection also went on as scheduled Tuesday, though Mayor Chris Doherty said it appeared many homeowners didn't put their garbage out overnight Monday so it wouldn't be blown around by high winds.
Sam Vitris, city DPW union president, said much of the city was littered with sticks, twigs and roof shingles.
"Other than that, (it was) not too bad. ... Sandy really spared us," he said.
Lackawanna County officials deactivated their emergency operations center at the Public Safety Center in Jessup on Tuesday at 7 a.m.
Mr. O'Brien said two things stood out about the county's response to Sandy.
The first was communications, he said. As the storm unfolded Monday afternoon into Tuesday morning, members of the county community relations staff were in regular contact with officials in all 40 municipalities.
The other was the county's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to relay critical information about the storm to the public.
"I think we were successful in deploying social media in a way that kept local residents informed on a minute-by-minute basis," Mr. O'Brien said.
Staff writers Sarah Hofius Hall, Jim Lockwood, R.B. Swift, Denise Allabaugh, Bob Kalinowski and Elizabeth Skrapits contributed to this story.
Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com