Daily Inspiration #258 – A Video by Amy Medina

Hurricane Irene hit Long Island, NY on August 27th and 28th, 2011. Though it wasn’t as bad as predicted, there were fairly wide-spread power-outages around Long Island and some communities got hit hard with flooding and downed trees. Last night, half-a-million people were still without power on Long Island, and as of this morning it’s still more than 300,000… some of which won’t get power back for five days. As seen on the news, most business were shut down starting, at latest, Saturday afternoon, and even the entire transit system shut down… all trains, buses and planes, including out on Long Island. The Long Island Railroad still isn’t running a full schedule yet.

We came through ourselves okay, though my brother’s girlfriend’s car was hit by a falling tree around the block from us. You’ll see it in the video. My mother was in an evacuation zone, and her and her cat are back home and okay. Several friends of ours are still without power, but we live in a neighborhood with underground wiring, and though it flickered a few times, we never lost power completely.

The video itself is a slide show (with a few video clips) showing what I saw before, during and after. You will see in several shots from before and after how calm the Great South Bay usually is… and how rough it really got during the storm. We never see the Bay look like this! A man was actually killed wind-surfing in the hours after the storm, when it was still very rough, in a town about 6 miles from here. Towards the end you’ll see some shots from this morning… now two days later. The cleanup is still going on… and yesterday and today a Pelican has been spotted, which is very unusual for this area. He has obviously been blown way off course by the storm.

Shot with K-5 mostly, and a little with the M8.

Music: My husband, Tony Medina, performing a cover-song of the Eurythmics, “Here Comes the Rain Again”

http://www.dangrabbit.com/photography

ps. If you can’t get to my website it’s because of the power outages. I use a local company and the town they are in was hit pretty hard. Join me on Facebook in the meantime. 🙂

15 Comments

  1. Amy, love your hubby’s cover of Annie Lennox’ song. Please let us know on your site when it’s available. Glad everyone’s ok following the storms.

  2. Thanks for sharing that. I documented the central NJ Irene destruction with my Leica X1 and Flip on Sunday-Mon-Tues. Our house and trees all fared well, and our boat was hauled before the storm and is safely back in her slip, unscathed thankfully.

  3. Thanks for sharing!

    This reminds me of Alicia, Allison, Rita, and Ike, down in my part of the world, though I was not active in photography during those times, so I don’t even have amateurish snapshots as a reminder. Ike, especially, hit us hard.

    Great music!

    Y’all have a good recovery up there! Be nice to the folks who are working long hours to get things back to normal.

  4. Great little video, can i get hold of a copy of you r hubby singing that song?, a great version

  5. That was amazing. Loved the rendition of the Eurythmics song. Connecticut got a lot of power outages and flooding as well.

  6. J’ai trouvé cette vidéo très émouvante, elle m’a rappelée la terrible tempête que nous avons subit en France, en Gironde, chez moi, en 1999. Je n’ai hélas! pas d’images personnelles à vous envoyer, mais on doit pouvoir encore en trouver sur le net. Tout ceci pour vous dire que je vous remercie Amy d’avoir partagé vos images avec nous tous, et merci à toi Steve pour lui avoir laissé un espace dans ton site. Du courage pour NY! Sylvie.

  7. You were very fortunate Amy. I was a little boy when the Nor Easter of March 1962 leveled Long Beach Island. Like many in Katrina, along with my parents and brothers, I survived 3 days in an attic of the lone house to not wash away in the little town of Harvey Cedars. Thirty years later I watched a category 5 hurricane, Iniki, level the island of Kauai from my boat. When I came ashore, there was not a leaf left on a tree or a street you could walk on that was not blocked by roofs or telephone poles. Iniki was a compact and fast moving storm. It only lasted a few hours but a wind gage broke on the top of the mountain. It read 227 MPH.

    Your photos and video remind me that I’ve had two strikes. I do not want to see another pitch from Mother Nature. I am afraid, however, that we will all see more storms and the barrier islands along the East Coast are very vulnerable. Most streets on Long Beach Island and Long Island are only a few feet above sea level. Add a 5-10 surge, rain and 30 foot waves and storms become a bullet that is very hard to dodge. Thank your lucky stars that you are still with us and thank you for the photos!

    Tom

    • Tom… thanks for sharing your story. I’ve been through three big hurricanes at this point… Belle in 1975 (which I barely remember, though we were evacuated), Gloria in 1985 (we were evacuated, didn’t have power for almost 2 weeks and missed school for almost 3) and now Irene, which caused more flooding than Gloria, but less downed-trees. It’s also amazing how much damage was done inland – in New Jersey, PA, upstate NY and even Vermont because of the west-side of the storm and all it’s rain. I found out today that my Uncle in northeastern PA suffered roof damage with two trees landing on his house, and they still don’t have power. My aunt who lives a few miles from him also just got power back and says a lot of roads are down with flooding and trees down. Unbelievable to think that Irene reeked havoc so far from the coast.

    • Tom, you are indeed wise to be weary of round 3 from mother nature. Well written piece, you had me drawn in from the second sentence. I don’t know how you photograph but you sure can write. A succinct and powerful piece. bravo.

  8. Very nice imagery and music. Really like how it ends on an upbeat note with the last two images. Nice.

    Thanks.

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