GREETINGS FROM STATEN ISLAND
WHERE IT SUCKS ALL THE DICK
My family lives down on Midland Avenue, near the (a) beach. We evacuated last year for Irene and nothing happened, so we decided to stay for Sandy. Monday night it's starting to flood. We decide to go out on the steps leading up to our house and just watch what happens. Within a few minutes, the water has already risen up a couple of feet. We remain there, as the water starts to eat up the steps leading to the steps.
It's about 9:40, there's already around four feet of water, and people are starting to come up to us. We already have our neighbors that live on the first floor there, and some guy wandering through the water comes up too. Several minutes later we're pushed up to our front door, cars are starting to get pushed by the water, and people are starting to come up to us. My neighbor who lives in a little blue bungalow thing next to our house asks our help to get his 71 year old grandma out. We help her get in our house. There's also a family of three (a 78 year old mother with her middle-aged children) up to our house. The 78 year old has an ulcer on her ankle-ish area and diabetes, so my mom (who's a podiatrist (doctor for the feet up to the knee)) starts working on her once we get her to the second floor.
Around 10 the waters high enough to completely cover most cars and there's a woman crying for help. My neighbor with the 71 year old grandma has a cable and we manage to fish the woman out. As we close our door we can see the wires of the telephone poles breaking and showering sparks everywhere. That's also about when we lost power.
There's 14 people (and a dog) in my house (my family including myself, my neighbors on the first floor and their dog, the family of three, the neighbor in the blue bungalow with his mother and nephew, and the woman we fished out) are chilling in my house (which is on the second floor). There's no power and the water's 10 feet high, completely covering my neighbor's white van. It's even a couple of feet up on the first floor. We spend the night checking on the water levels, listening to the radio, and sleeping.
In the morning the water's down a bit and the woman we fished out goes out on her own. Some guys are riding around in a boat getting people to dry land - they end up taking my neighbors in the blue bungalow (who had a dog that managed to survive the entire night by swimming in the shed he managed to get himself in and keeping his head in the little air space, poor dog) over several trips out. It's only my family and our neighbors on the first floor. We stay until official evacuations with police and firefighters come and then leave.
The police bus takes us to the Guyon/Hylan intersection (our neighbors got off before) and we hike up to our friend's house where we parked our little sedan. We then drive to our family friend's house by P.S. 60 (down Richmond) and we've been there since. Although they had a generator, their power was only turned on earlier today, and this is the first chance I got to get on the computer.
We're all safe and it's chill, but it's going to be a while before we can go back to our house. My grandparents in Ocean Avenue were also kind of fucked, with no power, but they're fine now.
I mentioned some places but that's only because I saw some other guy from SI who posted a picture of Mason Avenue. I have some pictures of my own but can't upload atm.
