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Mostly Cloudy Valley Stream storm stories
Village, residents cleaning up from powerful nor'easter
Dozens of trees crashed to the ground, tearing up sidewalks and ripping down electrical wires in Valley Stream during last weekend’s nor’easter. Village officials estimated that it will take at least until the end of the week to clean up the damage. Hundreds of homes remained without power at midweek.
Highway Superintendent Tim Leahy estimated that at least 50 trees fell along village streets, not to mention hundreds of large branches, as well as countless trees on private property. Highway crews, along with code enforcement, public safety and police officers, blocked off streets where trees and wires had fallen during the height of the storm last Saturday night.
Crews began working overtime on Sunday to make roads passable again. Leahy said that in several locations, highway workers couldn’t remove fallen trees until the Long Island Power Authority came. “We can’t do anything when there’s a lot of wires involved,” he said.
Leahy said the highway workers were prepared for massive flooding when it was predicted there would be a lot of rain over the weekend. However, Leahy said, the flooding turned out to be minimal, and it was the wind that did the most damage.
It ripped off numerous shingles on Jeannine Maloney’s Munro Boulevard home. The Maloneys had to put a tarp down in the attic to prevent water from leaking into the rest of the house. “We just lost enough of our shingles that we’re going to have to get a new roof put on,” she said.
Melissa Healy, who lives on Jackson Road, said that her family was without power from about 5 p.m. on Saturday to noon on Sunday. “I had to throw out everything that was in the fridge,” said Healy. “We couldn’t go anywhere. We ate a lot of dry food and we had snacks and dry cereal. We tried to use what was in the fridge while it was still good.”
The storm was a very scary experience for her 3-year-old son. She said he was terrified of the noises outside, from the howling wind to crashing objects — including her next-door neighbor’s fence, which ended up in the Healys’ driveway.
