Gloria centered on Blue Point, LI when I lived 3 towns up the coast in Bellport. They told us to evacuate and go to the High school gym. We stayed in our 1840 house and had to moved the porta-crib with our 10 week old into our only hallway because there were windows in every other place in the house. We watched 300 ft of mature trees crack, snap, and pass by windows on the diagonal before they hit the ground. Within 5 minutes of crying "Uncle" to the extent that we admitted being fearful that we couldn't handle any more, the storm's peak had passed and calm came soon enough.
We lived on the main road, so our electricity came back before anybody else we knew, maybe 3 days later. Until then, we all showered & cooked at houses where there was gas. Then, everybody shifted to our house for food storage, meals, washing up, hanging out. It had its magical upside in the sense of care & common purpose.
The New Haven factory building where we'd lived in a loft on the top floor of the biggest of the connected buildings (before moving to Long Island) lost so much of that 5th floor that it had to be evened out, capped, and re-roofed at 4 floors in the aftermath. When I went to check it out a few years later, the claw foot bath tub that had had its underside painted purple sat in the large hallway on the 4th floor.
Until this morning, I had no idea there was a hurricane coming. Yesterday, I was looking at my sister's Cayuga Lake dock: the metal got tangled & half the wood washed away a couple nights ago. On Sunday, it might have some new stories to tell. I hope not.
