Washed Away: Far Rockaway The Day After Sandy

On the drive from Southern Nassau County to Far Rockaway we saw trees, houses, sidewalks, and the regalia of people’s lives overturned, shattered, splintered, and destroyed. But, we noticed, most homes seemed safe…though the status of their basements can’t be assessed in a drive-by.

As we approached the neighborhood I grew up in the seriousness of Sandy had become more than apparent as the local firehouse had all of its Engines out on the street, as ambulances patrolled the streets silently, as well appointed police officers emanated from the 101 Precinct, and the National Guardsmen sat on point in their camouflaged hummer. Downed trees littered the Mott Avenue and Beach Channel Drive and we made our way down the meandering streets to the block I grew up on. At the corner a tall and skinny tree–one planted by the Bloomberg Million Trees incidentally, was root up and sitting on top of the corner mailbox, much as I had many a summer night as teenager.

Riding down the block I was flooded with a strange anxiety to see the damage. My imagination had colored the scene as some strange hybrid of The Day After Tomorrow and the last scene from The Shawshank Redemption. I looked across the street from my childhood home and saw the giant weeping willow, once a mighty haven of shade, now toppled and unearthed and sloppily strewn through and upon our neighbor City Councilman James Sanders car. The Councilman was on his cell phone conducting what seemed to be a hybrid of official capacity phone calls and personal ones regarding the status of power and assistance cleaning up. Several neighbors and my cousin were cutting through the Arms and branches with machetes and long handled chainsaws. After checking in with my grandfather and my on a few friends and their mothers I lent a hand in removing the branches; until my wife called me over to assist my mother, now ready to enter her apartment.