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Your Problems And Mine Are Nothing

A sobering post from the comboxes from Bugg, one of this blog’s readers. God help him, his family, and the people of his city. Let’s us help too: the American Red Cross needs donations for victims of the hurricane. I just gave online here. Please consider doing your part to help your fellow Americans. Tomorrow, […]
Breezy Point

A sobering post from the comboxes from Bugg, one of this blog’s readers. God help him, his family, and the people of his city. Let’s us help too: the American Red Cross needs donations for victims of the hurricane. I just gave online here. Please consider doing your part to help your fellow Americans. Tomorrow, it could be you. You never know. Here’s what Bugg and his people are living through:

Was reading in the dark by flashlight for 3 nights. Thankfully power came on yesterday morning.Beside the depravity of George RR Martin’s 7 Kingdoms can keep reality out for only so long.

But that is the least of the problems here. My mom’s home in Breezy Point is nothing but cinderblocks and ashes. It looks like Hiroshima or Dresden after WWII. Our bungalow is a total loss, as is that of my brother. Fortunately we both have yearround houses in Brooklyn that are not damaged. Many people like my mom are yearround there and have lost everything. Even where there wasn’t a fire houses looked like they were tossed around like children’s toys or stomped on by giants.

But miraculously nobody was killed. Several of our friends and neighbors fled through chest-deep storm surge as the homes exploded. Basically the surge salt water hit a transformer , that sparked and lit up a few houses, and then the wind pushed the fire. FDNY couldn’t get there for 2 hours due to the surge, and the water pressure was low.Also, Belle Harbor down the road had the same exact thing happen.so there are city blocks there that are as bad. Met one guy I know who lost houses in both neighborhoods.

The vollies fought the fire with the seatwater . It was heroic. How nobody was killed defies logic.FDNY couldn’t get there for 2 hours due to surge. Many of those responding firefighters live in either Breezy or Belle Harbor-they came over the Marine Parkway Bridge from Brooklyn to see BH burning on the left and Breezy burning on the right, and being incapable of getting to either until the tide receded.

But all things considered we are safe in our Brooklyn house(as is my brother in his)and we expect to have a place for my mom to set up shop today in a house thta my late father-in-law left to my wife and her sister that simply hasn’t been sold yet. Power was restored for us yesterday morning. Still chunks of Manhattan, Staten Island, all of Rockaway, parts of Brooklyn and Queens and close to 90% of Long Island have no power. You don’t realize how much you depend on it until it’s gone.

Odd thing-even though you know there’s no power the habit of trurning on or off a light switch when you walk into or out of a room is a constant.Every time.

We are going to be all right. There are reports of people drowing in their basements in SI, Rockaway and Gerrtisen Beach, Brooklyn and children being washed away in Staten Island. Rest in peace.

Tomorrow we’re going back to scavenge what we can.

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