Hurricane Sandy shredded the Atlantic Seaboard, flattening entire neighborhoods in New York and New Jersey, and it will take a long time to tally the full measure of that devastation.
She measures out the devastation of each song slowly, like a person giving directions to someone wearing a blindfold; she can make small ideas feel oceanic, and shockingly raw thoughts seem almost low-key.
It was a measure of the storm's devastation in the region that in Connecticut, where officials on Tuesday reported almost 600,000 utility customers without power, and substantial damage to many shoreline communities, the general sense was that it could have been worse.
According to Gerry Galloway, another civil engineering professor at the University of Maryland, in the storm preparedness game, the category of a hurricane, from one to five, was once the measure of potential devastation.
The scale and speed of the devastation defy comprehension, and no movie could be expected to convey the full measure of the horror.
The extent of the devastation across the Caribbean will become clear in the coming months as biologists measure the deaths.
According to the 2015 World Economic Forum, "The Water crisis is the number one global risk based on impact to society as a measure of devastation".
Some of the devastation is being caused by natural forces.
