Neighbors clean up after storm in Mill Brook

Neighbors came together on Elderberry Lane in the Mill Brook section of Valley Stream on Sunday to clean up three trees that fell in the road.

Residents of the dead end street of about 15 homes on the north side of Flower Road couldn’t get out with two trees blocking the corner, and another fallen about halfway down. Marcelo De Carvalho said he got up on Sunday morning to assess the damage and check on his neighbors. He had already noticed the tree down by his home, and was walking toward the corner. About 20 feet away, he heard another tree starting to crack. “I stopped and then all of the sudden it just fell,” he said.

The tree cracked about six feet from the bottom and hit another tree directly across the street. Because those trees were just feet from the corner, the fallen limbs blocked all access to and from Elderberry Lane. De Carvalho got his son and his saw and they went to work removing the obstruction.

“Everybody came out and helped,” he said. “We had fun. We live in a nice neighborhood. Everybody helps out.”

De Carvalho’s son, Isaac, a junior at South High School, said soon after he and his father began cutting up the tree, other residents came by. While De Carvalho worked the saw, the neighbors picked up and carried away the cut-up limbs.

Isaac said that because of the way the first tree snapped, it was still partially attached to the base. Neighbors held it in place with ropes, so it wouldn’t fall on anyone until his dad could get to that part of the tree with his saw. “We had all the tools to get it done,” Isaac said.

After clearing those two trees at the end of the street, the neighbors got to work on some big limbs that fell in front of De Carvalho’s house during the storm. Isaac said it took them about three hours to clear all the debris, but said it would have taken much more time without the help of the neighbors.

Freddie Ferdinand, who lives on Flower Road at Elderberry Lane, was one of the neighbors who came out to help. “It was completely blocking [the street],” he said of the fallen tree at the corner. “We had to cut it into pieces.”

The neighborhood had lost its electricity so De Carvalho used his generator to power his saw. Once the work was complete, he said he planned to call the Town of Hempstead to haul away to pile of cut up limbs and branches that the neighbors neatly piled up near the street corner.