Hurricane Sandy...Riding Out the Storm!

Here is the line of communication we had from Ian throughout the day of the storm.  Pretty amazing! SO grateful they are safe:)

Monday October 29th:

8:54 am.

 Ian: "they have called for a mandatory evacuation of all downtown, so they couldn't let us work.  One of the reasons the stock exchange is closed today."

 Christy:  "Unfortunately I'm at work:("

9:11 am.

Ian:  "I made pesto. we also had a bunch of tomatoes so I'm making Christy's famous marinara sauce.   Sauce smells amazing! Next up, banana bread."

10:02 am.

Ian: "Hudson now high enough its flooding Battery park. it's up over the regular wall! Where I run every day is at water level."

11:05 am.

Ian: "Here comes the rain...and storm surge."

12:44 pm.

Ian:  "The hurricane is still 250 miles away:( They are saying we won't see reall storm surge or winds til after 8:00 pm. Although its getting pretty bad.  The house is shaking!  It's now worse the the worst Enoch winds."

12:46 pm.

Ian:  "We just had siding blow off the house."

12:58 pm.

Ian: "Wow! It just got terribly windy."

1:01 pm.

Ian: “Shook the house so bad the kids let out a scream.  Can't believe we're in for hours of this."

1:15 pm.

Ian: "We now have shingles blowing off the house."

1:25 pm.

Ian:  "First huge tree went down on Wright Street."

1:26 pm.

Ian: "The wind is now incredible!"

1:33 pm.

Ian: "Slush?! We are less than a half mile from the ocean but we are on a hill.  I'm not too worried about storm surge but the wind has got me a bit worried now. That hazy mist in the horizon is the ocean."

  1:53 pm

Ian:  "Just had a piece of our neighbor’s house hit our side window.  Fortunately it didn't break but it sliced our screen in half."

5:01 pm.

Ian: 'We’ve lost more of our siding recently and I went out to divert water.  The wind is so strong against the front of the house that the wall by the 2 large windows is visibly flexing."

Christy: "Ian just opened the window to try to pull off the siding that kept clapping against our house and glass frames came flying off our walls and breaking. I’ve never felt a house shake this hard for so long."

5:10 pm.

Ian:  "The rain isn't crazy yet.  It's the wind.  This wind is crazy and is driving the ocean inland.  I've never felt wind like this."

6:03 pm.

Ian: "I wish I could describe this wind.  It's shaking the house.  Incredible!"

6:04 pm.

Ian: “The Ocean below us is breaching the pier and the waves are incredible!"

6:09 pm.

Ian: "On a lighter note.  The Marinara sauce got rave reviews."

6:18 pm.

Reading now.  Frodo Baggins had it much worse."

6:32 pm.

Ian: "We just lost power."

Christy: "We are surrounded by darkness.  The wind is howling.  The rain is all around us.  Ready for this to be over already but I'm afraid it's just the beginning." 

 

 

Tues October 30th:

5:53 am.

Ian: Sun is up.  The strong winds have died down.  Light rain.  We are blessed that we are all safe.  We'll go out soon to clean up, but we know we haven't had bad flooding, or fire, or broken windows.  We are blessed. That was a very powerful storm.  the strongest winds I've ever experienced from about 5:00 pm to 3:00 am.  We've seen reports of the flooding in Manhattan and we can see felled trees from our window."

5:56 pm.

Ian:  "We have no power so you probably won't hear from us for awhile, but we're safe."

 

7:31 am:

Ian:  "Trying to use the food in our fridge before it goes bad.  Cooking eggs and ham on a small camp stove.  And we are freezing.  Guess we will need to throw on the layers."

"Out Helping again today. Our ward helped organize about 600 volunteers to clean houses. Mormon helping hands are by far the greatest presence providing disaster relief in Staten island this week. Unfortunately Red Cross is almost non existent . FEMA and Government also nowhere. The place is being cleaned up by volunteers, mostly by religious groups and others organized through their employer. Young people are showing up to work and getting it done. It's amazing to see really. This particular house was owned by a young couple. A couple of the ladies from church sat down on the porch and helped the young wife salvage pictures from a scrapbook while the men did the heavy lifting." (Ian)

"The destruction in these areas can be massive. Hard to understand how some of these neighborhoods can ever return. There was a group of people that pulled a trailer up from New Orleans and were serving the best Jambalaya I have ever tasted. They fed hundreds of people. They made the red cross water and power bars completely irrelevant. Seriously amazing people and great cooks. They were cooking it right there in huge vats. It was awesome" (Ian) 

"Ive never been so dirty in my life, but I'm happy to help" (Christy)

 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Helping Hands.

  

In the meantime: "Piles of money (9year old) Kira raised for the march of Dimes to take care of premature babies. she went door to door alone selling candy bars. In fact, we didn't know she was doing it!" (Ian)

upper right pic:  Meeting for a special sacrament meeting, and then its off to work:) "Its overwhelming and very emotional to pull into the church to see hundreds of people from surrounding states to help. Today the primary children received a Halloween package from Boy Scouts upstate because they "had a feeling that our children missed out on trick or treating" We were all in tears. Even as I'm writing this it brings me to tears once again." (Christy) 

Lower left pic: "Missionaries on the beach at lunchtime, where a house once stood" 

"Seeing cousin Greg was crazy! Unfortunately I didn't get to see him after we left the church. Their stake has been sending hundreds of people each weekend, amazing people. In fact we've had more help from Valley Forge than our own stake." (Ian)

Still boats in the street. (lower left) The lady we helped said, "You're help was truly a miracle." And she performed the miracle of making incredible pasta without electricity:) We all held hands in the basement and prayed before we left. The last house we cleaned, the guy was a con-ed worker and hasn't been home to work on his house cause he's been working on the cities electric grid. His house was flooded with 4 ft of sewage. he went to Miller Field this morning asking Red Cross and FEMA for help to no avail. We were driving down the road miles from his home and happened to ask someone if they knew anyone who needed help. The woman gave me his number and when we showed up he was speechless. We cleared out the whole basement in a couple of hours. When we asked if we could pray with him as we were leaving he said he hadn't prayed in years, but was happy to now and said a nice prayer for his family"

A week after Hurricane Sandy, another Storm hit. A cold Nor Easter, and dumped snow on areas still without power and many people still homeless.

 "Looking out the window at my temporary office in Midtown Manhattan and noticed I'm right by the broken crane from the hurricane. Still broken." (Ian)

 

 "Something about this city even when it's struggling and somewhat broken" (Ian)

The sunshine after the storm! So many stories of faith and hope coming out of such devastated areas, I can't help but share some of the pics and experiences. So inspiring:)