Thursday, November 17, 2011

Irene...

I was gonna write about something else today..but an fb friend posted a video this morning that reminded me that I've been meaning to post about this for a while...

at the end of August hurricane Irene visited the northeast..actually by the time it got to NY it had been downgraded to a tropical storm (btw did you know that the ONLY difference between a hurricane and a tropical storm is wind speed..39-73 mph for a tropical storm..74 mph or higher for a hurricane) ...for at least a week before it hit, Irene was all anyone talked about..it was the top news story for DAYS...especially where I'm from which is very close to NYC

this time I guess I'll cut 'em some slack...normally I would joke about how the city flips out any time a potentially serious weather event is predicted (somehow to them 2 inches of snow is a potentially serious weather event...or at least it used to be..I think they might be getting over themselves now that the earth seems to have shifted on it's axis)

anyway..like I said..Irene was a major news story for days and days...people were preparing for the apocalypse..stocking up on canned goods..building arks and whatnot

as the day approached I was totally PSYCHED...I LOVE severe weather..the windier the better!! ..of course I was mildly concerned about our house getting flooded AGAIN...but for being in a valley..we're high up and far from the river..the chance of any kind of devastating flood damage here seems pretty unlikely
 
being the dork that I am I can't help but keep an eye on the weather reports and whatnot...I get a kick out of seeing the city streets completely empty but for soaking wet reporters holding inverted umbrellas..pointing at trees and street signs blowing in the breeze...

my only real concern personally was losing power..but we live smack between the local fire house and police station..so even though this whole area is generally neglected by the power company (and news) we very rarely lose power for any significant amount of time...so really I knew we'd be ok short of a tree falling on our house or something like that...

for me and the spousal unit, Irene was just an excuse to laze around the house in our PJs and listen to the rain...y'all know I LOVE rainy days!! :)

when all was said and done we had nothing more than a very rainy day...there was plenty of mild to moderate flooding nearby AND in the city, long island etc. but nothing particularly newsworthy...we've been through worse (in fact we just were a couple weeks ago when we had a major snow storm at the end of october)

so...because the city and surrounding areas made it through virtually unscathed news of Irene fizzled out pretty quickly...

unfortunately this means that most people are under the impression that once again the big northeast storm hoopla was as usual..much ado about nothing

when nothing could be father from the truth!

what you likely didn't hear about was the complete and utter DEVASTATION of entire TOWNS in upstate NY!! (less than an hour from me) 

as you can tell from these videos below..this is NOT an affluent area..and these people lost EVERYTHING!! ...many of them have had to be separated from their families in the process of finding more permanent lodging/waiting for FEMA to approve them for trailers etc.

 
 

what you can't see in the videos is that even the houses that LOOK ok were hit with massive flooding and are now filled with mud..and rotting from the inside out!!
if you click THIS LINK you can see video that was taken just a few days ago of the same area...sadly not much has changed! 

in addition to the loss of homes and personal belongings..businesses were destroyed (more jobs were lost!) people lost pets..farmers lost animals and entire crops were completely wiped out!!

here we are now over 2 months later..and still so many people there are displaced..wearing donated clothes, eating donated food and drinking donated water...they have NOTHING but the love and support of their neighbors and a whole lot of HOPE!

I've been doin' a lot of moping around lately..so when I saw my friend's vid on fb..instead of sitting here feeling sorry for myself..probably re-writing for the 20th time a letter I'll probably never send..to a person who probably doesn't care anyway...I decided to write this post 

when I watch these videos I can't help but be reminded of how absolutely fortunate I am...so what if I'm a little wounded emotionally..at least I still have this roof over my head..all my family photos and keepsakes..and I don't hafta pick through donation boxes for something to wear or eat or drink! 

thanks to the economy it won't be the best holiday season for most people this year...but we all still have a lot to be thankful for..so as we prepare for the national day of stuffing our faces and giving thanks for all the awesomesness in our lives (home, food, pets, those crazy people gathered around the table with us) ..it couldn't hurt to send a few good vibes to those less fortunate...like the people you probably never knew existed in the mountain towns of upstate NY...who are holding their lives together by a donated thread :) ♥

6 comments:

  1. That is so true Brandi...everyone acted like nothing happened, meanwhile there was an entire town washed out!!!! It breaks my heart, I wish I could do more. WOW, that video is insane, ugh. People were all about helping New Orleans after Katrina....where's the line to help these people?? Oh wait that's right..... (I'll just keep my mouth shut but I'm sure you know what I'm gonna say)
    Just devastating.....

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  2. we had just been in Windham like the week or so before (Bill ran the Warrior Dash) ...it's such a beautiful area (or at least it WAS) I'm sure it will be again...I've thought of volunteering but I'm basically useless when it comes to manual labor..I'm definitely gonna look into adopting one of the families for christmas though!

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  3. I knew that a hurricane is classified by it's wind speed. (You knew I knew.)

    I knew towns in upstate NY got washed out. We had massive flooding in neighboring towns on the Passaic River near me.

    I didn't know there hasn't been a significant recovery yet.

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  4. yes I know you know hehehe...I guess my point was they make it out to be like ooh it's JUST a tropical storm now..but you still get the same amount of rain..and heck you could still be getting 73 mph winds (not that we did...but..you know)

    did you have flooding like THIS down there?? I saw some flooding down there on the news but nothing like this! ...prattsville was completely wiped out! and other towns around there didn't make out much better

    it didn't help that like a week later we got the remnants from that other hurricane..that rain wasn't much different...just as the water from Irene started to recede..WHAM along came another one...and actually it rained almost daily for a couple weeks at that point

    and I'm sure the snow storm didn't help the recovery any...

    add to that the pace at which the government gets things done and it's no surprise that these people are still basically homeless

    actually after I posted this, the local paper printed a story about it: click here

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  5. Yes, it was like that. But we have basements here, not slabs. Their basement gets flooded and that's about it. In the late 90s we had one that they called a "hundred year storm" that flooded the river and the homes. It's happened 4 times since.

    100 years comes often these days.

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  6. it does, it does! ...we've had more 'storms of historic proportions' in the last few years! ..soon we'll just call it normal hehehe

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