Hard lessons have been learned in the year since Hurricane Irene and its remnants killed dozens of people along the Eastern Seaboard.
The storm made a direct hit on New York City, but damage there and in other big cities was minimal. That gave many Easterners the impression that the much-feared storm was a dud.
But it soon became clear that the rains had saved their most dramatic damage for inland areas. Flooding tore apart roads and bridges in Vermont and upstate New York and isolated entire communities.
A year later, people are doing things like buying home generators, and legislators have tightened utility regulations in several states where power was lost for days.
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