living in a combat zone!!
Hey all,
well we are on the south shore of nassau county, long island... this is the first i've been able to get on a computer in a week..... i have witnessed first hand the level of devastation i have only seen on tv (katrina)...
the town i live in is just north of the barrier island Long Beach.... my previous home town... the island is almost unrecognizable... i saw a 20' tall wall of sand the other day!! on a major roadway....
my shop had 5' of salt water and sewage in it at the height of the storm...., but fortunately we moved all the equipment to higher ground.. lost some materials, computers, a couple pieces of substrate, and minor tools.... i was able to back everything up and get all of the hard drives out of the shop beforehand...
we live in a area that has a sewage treatment plant really close, and they lost (or shut down) power before the major flooding started and it was backing up for at least a 1/2 mile away from the plant....
i'm also a volunteer firefighter in my town... at the height of the storm , we were listening to all the calls on the radios for help, and the small zodiacs that my dept has were useless in the wind...so we grabbed one of our personal boston whalers and i went out with four other members, and all in all we got 5 people out of their houses... one being a pregnant women in labor that was in a national guard truck that was stuck in mud!! all in total we were in the boat for about 4 hours....
get back to the firehouse and see 7 texts from my sister inlaw saying that my inlaws house was taking on water and the foundation was compromised... and that is where my wife and kids were staying... so we jumped in the truck and raced there, only able to get within 200 yards of the house... me and one of the younger guys swam to the house and carried my kids and the rest of the family to the national guard truck that we dispatched to the house.... thats when i really s#$t my pants.... having to rescue your own family is very heart wrenching ....
sorry for the novel, but its been a very long and tiring week, and i always love to come on here and usually lurk, but i needed to blow off a little tonight.... thankfully my family is all ok, we'll be without power probably another week, but one thing is for sure, my kids are learning some basic survival skills...
thanks for listening, and i will try to keep a update going as i have sporadic internet service where we are staying