A photographer’s view of Irene’s impact

I was lucky, but others were not.

When I woke up Sunday morning my home had power, no water in the basement, and although a tree had fallen, it didn’t touch a thing. With all in order I got dressed, grabbed my camera bag and set out to document the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.

Although the wind and rain had begun to subside, driving around had an eerie quality. The utter calm and quite that had settled was broken only by branches snapping under the wheels of my car.

As I drove, I saw people coming out of their homes. Some stood on their front lawns shaking their heads, as they looked over the felled trees while others dumped buckets of water out into the street.

I came upon my first real evidence of the damage done, at the corner of Peninsula Boulevard and Rockaway Avenue. Impassable with my small car, I pulled off to the side, and took pictures as trucks drove though, throwing huge waves of water all around.

After a slight detour I headed out down Mill Road, where down each side street I saw that water was everywhere.

Finally, I pulled over at Jedwood Place, where the water was overflowing and cars were flooded up over their license plates. I ventured as far down the street as I could where I saw men take off their shoes and wade through knee-deep water to cross the street.

Looking over my shoulder, back towards Mill Road, residents had gathered and were speaking to a police officer that had just closed off the street. I learned that those who lived on the street were not surprised by the amount of flooding, one woman blaming it on a nearby creek that easily and often overflowed.

“You think this is bad, go check out Central Avenue,” the police officer told me. “I just closed it off.”

He was right, also completely impassable; the area underneath the train overpass was filled with water. I watched as a man tried to ride his bicycle through, becoming stuck when his feet went completely underwater.

From there I tried to drive through the back streets towards Rockaway Avenue, only to get stuck at the corner of South Corona Avenue and West Lincoln Avenue. In front of my car a huge tree had fallen, blocking off the road entirely.

Looking more closely I saw two bright colored shirts playing on the thick branches: Christopher Guzman, 7, and his sister Ashley, 5, had turned the destruction on their street into a game. While fellow neighbors looked on, the two raced each other to see who could get through the brush the fastest. “The whole area lost power,” their mother Ana told me. “There are power lines everywhere, I worry.”

On my way home I cautiously drove through the yellow flashing lights, listening to the sirens that filled the air as fire trucks passed me by.