That was my last trip outside that day, 3 in the afternoon. The trees had begun to lash about by midmorning, when Sandy was still 200 miles away; by this time the storm was arriving. I only went because I had a cold and I suddenly realized that I'd run out of cold medicine -- I have asthma and if I don't keep myself on decongestants when I have a head cold the sniffles and coughs can turn into an attack. Needed to make sure that didn't happen on a day when it was getting to be a worse and worse idea to leave home if home was someplace safe. There's a drugstore on the next block over that was still open and after that I watched it from inside.
My neighborhood did relatively well. We have these beautiful big old trees and a lot of those went down, causing damage where they hit cars or trees (and sadly one did kill a young local couple who took their dog out for a walk during the worst of it), but we're far enough inland that it would take a much worse storm to flood us. Midwood begins just inside the last evacuation zone. If we ever have a storm where we're asked to move I really hope that there's been enough advance notice that I can go stay someplace further inland. Like maybe Michigan. That's not one I really want to be here for. For Sandy, there was a lot of cleanup but nothing like that that faced residents of lower-lying areas. Sebago Canoe Club actually did pretty well too, we did get flooded but we have a lot of professional contractors among the membership and they were absolute troopers about taking care of the stuff that required real knowledge to fix (wiring, drywall, etc), and then the stuff that just took a lot of willing hands (cleaning out the containers, moving boats and racks and walkways and stuff back to where they'd started) was taken care of with a couple of workdays that may have had the highest attendance in club history. Or at least it seemed like there were an awful lot of us there.
Long story short - I felt very lucky after that storm. I'm still grateful.
You still see damage all over in areas closer to the shoreline, but there's been progress too - and the main reason that I'm tossing this up on my lunch break is because I wanted to join the Old Salt Blogger and others in saying "Congratulations" to Carolina Salguero and company at PortSide NewYork, winners of a 2013 White House Champions of Change award for their work in helping their Red Hook neighbors rebuild. The link goes to a very nice post by Rick, I couldn't say it any better!
My neighborhood did relatively well. We have these beautiful big old trees and a lot of those went down, causing damage where they hit cars or trees (and sadly one did kill a young local couple who took their dog out for a walk during the worst of it), but we're far enough inland that it would take a much worse storm to flood us. Midwood begins just inside the last evacuation zone. If we ever have a storm where we're asked to move I really hope that there's been enough advance notice that I can go stay someplace further inland. Like maybe Michigan. That's not one I really want to be here for. For Sandy, there was a lot of cleanup but nothing like that that faced residents of lower-lying areas. Sebago Canoe Club actually did pretty well too, we did get flooded but we have a lot of professional contractors among the membership and they were absolute troopers about taking care of the stuff that required real knowledge to fix (wiring, drywall, etc), and then the stuff that just took a lot of willing hands (cleaning out the containers, moving boats and racks and walkways and stuff back to where they'd started) was taken care of with a couple of workdays that may have had the highest attendance in club history. Or at least it seemed like there were an awful lot of us there.
Long story short - I felt very lucky after that storm. I'm still grateful.
You still see damage all over in areas closer to the shoreline, but there's been progress too - and the main reason that I'm tossing this up on my lunch break is because I wanted to join the Old Salt Blogger and others in saying "Congratulations" to Carolina Salguero and company at PortSide NewYork, winners of a 2013 White House Champions of Change award for their work in helping their Red Hook neighbors rebuild. The link goes to a very nice post by Rick, I couldn't say it any better!
1 comment:
Thanks for the mention, Bonnie! All of us here are hoping the White House award helps us further some flood preparedness training ideas we have developed after Sandy, and that it also helps to attract more resources to Red Hook.
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