It's Called Irene

Yesterday morning I awoke to my phone ringing - the caller ID said "Home".

"Why aren't you in church?" I asked, confused as to why my family was calling me from home during their normal church hours.

"Have you not been watching the news?" replied my little brother. "There is this hurricane all up the east coast, you know. It's called Irene."

An hour later they called me back to tell me the flood evacuation sirens were sounding. A local sheriff had knocked on their door and told them to evacuate. To head for higher ground. In fact, most of the entire county was told to evacuate. Over 24 hours later, most people have still not been able to return to their homes...or at least, what's left of their homes...

If you watched the national news and saw coverage of the hurricane you probably heard some reporter saying, "Everything is OK - people definitely over-prepared, this storm was no where near as bad as it could have been."

If you watched coverage of the storm in New York, you probably heard Governor Cuomo say, "Great job, New Yorkers, you really pulled together and made it through this!" And by New Yorkers, he means New York City New Yorkers. Because the rest of New York has not made it through this yet.

If you watched this news, you probably didn't hear that over 200 National Guard personnel are in Schoharie County, providing rescue, assessing the damage, enforcing Martial law, and keeping news crews (and everyone else) out. You probably did not see this:

My dad walking down our road to the bridge - currently no roads into or out of Schoharie county are open, and all roads within Schoharie county are closed as well.

Road going into Middleburgh, which was virtually entirely under water.

From the top of Vroman's Nose before:

From the top of Vroman's Nose after:

The top of the ramp shows how high the water got. Thankfully, it didn't float away.

The barn, still underwater even after the water receded nearly 20 feet.

All of the crops are gone. Our neighbor lost 1.4 million $$ in damages to his farm.

Our neighbor, across the river. Their house was picked up, carried down the river, and smashed first into a bridge, then into these trees.

Another home across the river.

Propane tanks are gone. The bank caught on fire. Gas leaks are everywhere. MUD is everywhere, several feet thick in some places, including inside peoples' homes. We don't know yet if anyone was killed or is missing. They have been without power since last night, and no one can get in or out.

We do know hundreds of homes have been lost. Within my community, there will not be a single person who wasn't affected by this storm.

The one news reporter that was able to get in called it "utter devastation" 

(http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/top_stories/555294/residents-describe-schoharie-damage-as--utter-devastation-/) 

For NYC, the hurricane turned out to be just a nuisance. But for some people.... Irene really could not have been much worse...

(I realize I have taken a short hiatus from blogging. Nate and I took advantage of my generous 2 week long summer break from school and drove to NY. I was offline for 2 whole weeks, and when I got back I never really got in the swing of blogging again. That was over 2 months ago. Oops. Hopefully that hiatus is over.)