Irene's Aftermath

We were due to be on an 8:30am flight into White Plains, NY on Friday morning. Thursday night, while packing & watching the news reports on the potential path of Hurricane Irene, our initial mindset of "not a big deal" became more serious as the idea of how might we get back home if the worst case scenarios became true, started to sink in. By 4am Friday morning, with no overnight changes happening to the strength & path of the storm, and certain that our return flight on Monday would be canceled, we decided to scrap our travel plans to Connecticut.

So very disappointing and worrisome -- not only because I was missing my father's birthday, but what if Irene turned out to be everyone's worst nightmare, and I couldn't get to my family in the event they were in trouble.....  

As Irene approached their coastal town, Saturday night into Sunday morning, conditions were downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm. Residents experienced power outages, down trees, and a great amount of heavy flooding and damage to the homes along the beach. Thankfully, my parents weathered the storm just fine -- their power remained on and no fallen trees on the house, just plenty of limbs scattered around the property. Seeing the local photos of streets covered with water & sand, its shocking to think these are the same roads that runners, bikers, and walkers use on a daily basis! Serious destruction happened at the end of the beach road, where homes sit with the LI Sound in front of the them and a creek behind.

Looking Down Penfield Road to the Penfield Pavilion Entrance -- the beach is still a fair distance away from this point beyond the roof line of the Pavilion

At the End of Fairfield Beach Road -- the back of the house is sliding into the Creek, the LI Sound is beyond (above) and looking at the house from the Creek side (below)

This home has forever endured structural problems....  it sits up from the water on the LI Sound side, but at any typical high tide, the waves come in right underneath.  Clearly, the exterior couldn't withstand Irene's wind & rain!

{Images Via Here & Here}