Watching television early Sunday night, the Kiefer Sutherland horror movie Mirrors, start to pixelate on the screen. From my peripheral vision, I saw the reflection of an orange flash on the window. The street light two houses diagonally across the street was blown out by an oak tree from across the street slamming down on the transmission box, crushing a parked car and then splayed across the street.
This felled tree blew out the power of five houses on our street, but for about an hour or so, except for cable and landline, the rest of us continued to have power. When all power finally went out, we were ready with our flashlights and candles.
To our dismay, we were not ready for the week of no power, no internet, no television, nor landline. One week, two and counting for some, daily chores without power was a struggle. Everyone, from government officials to ordinary citizens, who thought we were prepared were proved wrong by Hurricane Sandy. Sandy huffed and puffed, blew in and out of our streets, swirled though our backyards, knocked down mighty deep rooted twin oaks, brought in floods, damages, angst, worry and despair.
First light on Monday, we walked through the neighborhood to view the damage. The destruction was horrific.
Two twin oak trees were ripped from their roots to fall on another neighbor's yard. The house next to the trees suffered some damage, but the tree owner's house was spared. Not a leaf touched his house!!!
Sidewalks were lifted from the pavement they were encased in.
The tree cutting crew cleared the tree to open up the street and uprighted the remaining trunk back. I wouldn't want to be anywhere this damaged tree in any kind of weather.
The Town of Hempstead tree cutters were on the job early Monday morning, clearing the streets of downed trees. Debris, tree limbs and trunks were shoveled to the curb to be cleared by another crew. As of this posting, the crew appears to be overwhelmed as the debris are still where they are.
As Sandy segued through it had a lot of fun blowing fences down, pummeling roofs, windows and whatever was in its way.
Despite the help of electricians who came all the way from California, Tennessee and upstate New York, it looked like the power lines were going to be down for a while. Our only means of communication were mobile phones, that is, if the cell towers were available. You saw the best in neighbors, helping each other out. My neighbors took turns charging my cell phone in their cars, and when Hal found out that none of his car adapters would fit the iphone, www.apple.com/iphone he went and purchased an extra adapter and charger for my phone. Thank you, Hal and Kathleen. Rocky offered internet use when his Verizon Fios was up ahead of Cablevision. www.verizon.com/FiOS, www.cablevision.com.
Governor Cuomo was on television on November 9, flabbergasted that part of the delay in restoring power was the lack of POLES!!! Heads are starting to roll at the Long Island Power Authority.
Adding drama, Long Island started to run out of gas. Folks who were running generators while power was down had to scrounge for gas. The long lines and wait, some as long as six hours, was frustrating. One businessman who had a pickup for his startup business, had to sleep in his pickup to be the first in line the next morning at the gas pump. In desperation people used the more expensive high-octane gasoline for their generators. The hardware stores www.homedepot.com, www.acehardware.com, www.lowes.com, in the Nassau area ran out of generators and batteries. Even big box store Costco www.costco.com ran out of generators to sell.
The Long Island Railroad http://www.longisland.com is now running on a modified schedule, meaning that when the trains arrive at the Merrick station, it is already packed as trains are running with local stops. Despite the packed trains the conductor has to repeatedly plead with riders not to hog seats. There are a lot of oblivious passengers who feel that their bags and briefcases are entitled to a seat too! Simply unbelievable.
Two major hospitals in downtown Manhattan lost their generator power, got flooded and had to evacuate patients to hospitals uptown. Photo, courtesy of L. Luchan, showing line of ambulances moving patients from NYU www.med.nyu.edu to Lenox Hill Hospital www.lenoxhillhospital.org.
As the lights came on for some and life was on its way to normalcy, a nor'easter struck New York and Long Island. Once more, we were huddled against the icy rain, snow and wind.
Sandy packed a lesser punch than Katrina, but the demographics of the areas they struck are very different. Less or not, hopefully this is the last of superstorms for a decade at least.
