Hurricane Sandy Impacts Cigar Aficionado

David Savona
Posted: November 6, 2012

Hurricane Sandy turned the lights off for millions last week and blacked out much of Manhattan. The power outages were felt far and wide, with 8.5 million East Coast residents in the dark at one point. We at Cigar Aficionado magazine were no different.

Our magazine’s offices were closed for the entire week of October 29, and remained without power until Saturday, November 3. With no power in our servers, we were unable to post our daily updates to CigarAficionado.com. Even as electricity was restored to New York, the recovery process wreaked havoc on our internal systems, and kept us from posting updates to the site until this morning. No other disaster, natural or otherwise, has kept us out of business for so long.

The effects of the storm on a publishing business, of course, are trivial when compared to the big picture. Hurricane Sandy killed at least 185 people, 113 in the United States alone, rendered thousands homeless and caused an estimated $50 billion in damages. It will be remembered as one of the most destructive storms ever in this part of the world.

Many of you have expressed concern for us in this difficult time, and we thank you. The staff of Cigar Aficionado is safe, and we have returned to work. We are working on our January issue, which will ship soon, and making the final arrangements for our biggest event of the year, the Big Smoke Las Vegas weekend, which begins on Friday night.

Thank you for your patience, thank you for your concern, and please don’t forget those who are truly in need after this horrible storm.