thtkidSummer

That game was an intense one. I was yelling and couldn’t breathe. When Bradshaw did that fall back touchdown, I couldn’t help but think why did he stop running?! I thought he didn’t know where the goal line was. Next it was a 4th and 16, Pats had no more timeouts. I wanted the game to end there so it wouldn’t have to come down to a Hail Mary. Yet, the Pats converted and it came down to the very last play. Brady threw it up. The Giants secondary was there, they jump up, the ball is tipped, and I saw Gronkowski almost ALMOST recover the ball for the rebound. However, he was 2 feet away from the ball. That was it, the Giants won. I breath a sigh of relief. My NY team one another championship. NY FOOTBALL GIANTS LETS FCKIN GO!!!

Here I will recall the events leading up to Hurricane Sandy, during Hurricane Sandy, and the aftermath. I’m putting in all aspects including the social media cause that played a huge part in this. If you have any spare time, this might be worth it.

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Just to say this is my first experience with a major storm/hurricane. This is the closest to an apocalypse situation I have gotten to with all the flooding, water, fire, power outage, darkness, cars exploding, isolation, etc.  I’ve been in Brooklyn for a power outage back in 2003, blizzards, severe thunder storms, and Hurricane Irene last year. I want to talk about Irene first. Hurricane Irene was listed as a Category 5 Hurricane when it struck last year in late August. I was scared since that was my first hurricane experience, and this was a Category 5 and it seemed to have been coming at full force. I was having thoughts of Hurricane Katrina in the back of my mind. My area was marked down as Zone A for mandatory evacuation. This was taken very seriously as my street became a ghost town soon when everyone evacuated. We elevated stuff inside the house especially the basement because we anticipated  major flooding to happen. We left to Staten Island. Irene came and went, leaving behind damage of down trees, down power lines, and there wasn’t as much flooding in Sheepsheadbay than we all anticipated. Hurricane Irene wasn’t as bad as we anticipated. Now, I believe this served as an impetus or driving force behind people’s decisions once Hurricane Sandy was creeping towards arrival.

Here I begin to recall the events. I will begin on Sunday, October 28.

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October 28:

Sunday I knew an impending hurricane was going to strike New York and the East Coast, but I took this day to enjoy watching sports. Going on was the Giants narrowly beating the Cowboys after Dez Bryant’s fingers touch the out of bounds line, ruling an incomplete. Then later that night I watched the San Francisco Giants win the World Series. These are my tweets from that time:

Now at the same time, what was going on in the news were press conferences and press conferences on mandatory evacuations in some parts of New Jersey and New York. How many times Bloomberg, Cuomo, Christie all said to take this hurricane seriously I can’t count. Sheepsheadbay once again was Zone A mandatory evacuation zone. However, a lot of people in my neighborhood wished to not heed the warnings because of the experience with Irene last year. “Oh, it’s overreacting.” “No need to worry too much.” “Not much happened with Irene, and that was a Category 5.” Those were the thoughts of probably many New Yorkers and New Jersians. Evacuating would be unnecessary, and this storm would just come and go. What I remember what NJ Governor Christie said that struck me. “Take this seriously. If you want to argue against my word, it’s not a good equation when I’m right and you’re dead.” This leads me to what a lot of people have been saying over twitter. “The news is hyping all of this up.” Look, I know you’re not that concerned for this storm, but you’re not God. I was humble to realize that during Irene, God didn’t allow for much damage. You can’t call the potential impact and severity of these hurricanes. It’s not in your control. You’re wrong to say that. Those tweets have been deleted cause when I looked back to check, they were gone. You can already tell, not a lot of people expected this severity or took it as seriously.

Robby lives 2 streets away from me. That was the atmosphere around the neighborhood. We just expected for this storm to come and go. My mom thought evacuating was unnecessary.

So after the World Series was over, I headed for bed, not ready for what was about to come.

October 29:

The entire morning and afternoon I stuck to watching the news. I was keeping track of Sandy. News reporters were scattered everywhere from NJ to NY to CT. In fact, at many of the places that were going to be hit hard, there were people there by the beach, by the water. Clearly they weren’t taking this as seriously because they wanted to be on tv. People were even at Coney Island beach surfing. It was around noontime I saw a photo on twitter. It was Manhattan Beach under water.

Hurricane Sandy wasn’t supposed to hit for a few more hours and the next neighborhood over from me was already flooded. I got a bit worried but was still pretty confident the water wouldn’t reach my house. Seeing this picture and all the crazy people looking for tv time made me want to go out later to Emmons. I wanted to see this first hand and look for a possible camera crew to get on tv. Those were my intentions.

As the day went on I noticed the wind growing stronger.

Just to add on this gave me a laugh when I read Gail’s tweet. Still, I’m saying to myself “It’s not going to be that bad, right?”

As soon as I got my AP US homework done, I was heading out to Emmons Ave around 6 to check out what was going on.

I hoped to get deep into Emmons like around the El Greco diner, but I was stopped way short. I was at the end of Emmons Ave right before it became Neptune Ave. The water had already extended and reached that far. I was shocked.

It looks like a river right?

I come back home to read some updates from Robby. They weren’t pleasant updates.

Next thing I do is go to his street to see how deep the water is. I made it as far as the corner since it was already knee deep. I start walking back to my house and I notice that Homecrest St and E 12 ST started flooding. My street saw some developing flooding up the block. At this time now I am really getting worried. My posts take over before we decide to leave.

My mom made the ultimate decision to leave once she saw the water in the toilet rise up. I assumed it was because the sewer was full from the flooding around. She thought that the bathroom alone would have flooded the entire house (which I thought was ridiculous), so we left for my Tita Sandi’s apartment a block over. I remind you we didn’t move anything in the house for anticipation of flooding. We left right before the high tide, and the power just went out. The tweets take over again. One going to the next day because I had to save my phone from dying.

I wasn’t there to see it, but I know that my street turned into a river that night. Talking to the people on my block the day after, they said that the entire street was flooded up to knee height water. Here’s Robby’s photo on East 14 ST

The high tide pushed the sea water this far inland. Sheepsheadbay was taking a hit from the water. Also going on, a house on my block caught on fire, Coney Island hospital were my Mom works lost power because of the faulty generator, and cars were exploding all around the area.

October 30:

The day after the major hit. We go home to the basement flooded. It became a swimming pool. The highest point of the flood in the basement almost reached the ceiling during the high tide. Everything in the basement washed up. And no one’s basement in my area was spared. People were pumping out water the entire day. I just leave it to all the damage shown.

Tito Kelly’s basement. Their door was pushed open by the water.

Then our basement. The door was slightly open. We couldn’t push the door open until later on.

East 11 was a river the night before.

Neighbor’s roof got chipped a bit.

Tree down by Robby’s house. Blocking off the entrance to the Belt Pkwy.

Trees down along the Belt.

Emmons Bay seemed to return to normal.

Helicopters were flying all over.

After draining and draining the water alone just in front of the entrance, we were able to break the door open.

Last night the highest level the water was at was almost near the ceiling. It was after the high tide that the water lowered down to the current level shown here.

I left the ping pong paddle on the floor next to the ping pong table. AND it ends up in the sink.

That area I circled was the highest the water level peaked to.

So for the rest of the day we tried cleaning out the basement, but there was too much water. There’s still no power and by 7 and I decide to go out for some food. Most of the food shops are closed, but I run into Robby. I go to his house and wait at his place for a bit because the only food place open was the halal stand and it was a 30 minute wait. God bless that halal man! Robby was telling me about his experience, the water surge, etc. If you want a better take on what happened with him, here’s the link to his write up.

http://robbyrise.tumblr.com/post/34767116637/sandy12-her-sheepshead-power-hour

Tito Pitong came up to me and told me “The water rise was so scary. It was like Hurricane Katrina. The only difference was that there weren’t floating bodies.”

October 31:

I get up the next morning to find out that all the water in the basement disappeared. I don’t know where it went, but thank you nature for that. I listened to the radio for the day. I didn’t remember it was Halloween until the radio reminded me so. Power came back around 5 PM. First thing I did was to go online and tell everyone we were alright. I spent a good amount of time getting back to people who were concerned for us. Thank you all for looking out!

November 1:

Breezy Point had it far worse than we had. Houses were on fire there, communities were destroyed. I feel so bad for them. I found this picture on facebook.

Mama Mary, she made it through. This is as powerful of a picture than it can get. It’s not hard to interpret the significance of this.

The local mall Kings Plaza flooded badly on that night.

Picture sent to me on twitter from one of my followers. Ocean City, NJ under water. The ocean basically mixed in.

I think it’s about time for me to wrap this up. So many people have been affected by this and the devastation has been terrible. I didn’t think it would be this bad. My thoughts and prayers to all those families suffering worse.

I’m going to put this out if you’d like to donate to the victims and to help those in need.This link will give you a few links to Red Cross, Salvation Army, Feeding America if you want to donate.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-sandy-victims/story?id=17598687#.UJP-ucXA-VM

I tweeted this yesterday.

New Yorkers are strong. We will help each other and rebuild as a community.

I leave off with this picture that someone DM to me on twitter.

The caption I had for this. “After every storm comes a rainbow.”