On Monday when the Hurricane hit in my community I was at my fire department ready to run calls. It got very busy very fast. We ran calls for wires down and burning, transformer explosions, trees down , etc. This continued for almost two days. Once things settled down in our community I connected with some friends in Somers and began working on organizing, collecting and delivering relief supplies into some of the hardest hit areas of NY. We made our first run into Rockaway and brought with us one loaded excursion filled with clothes, food, batteries, flashlights and dozens of other items donated by people in our community. We drove directly into the area and brought out supplies to a local VFW where there was an organized collection point.
Driving to the area was eye opening to say the least. I thought I had it bad when I had to wait behind 5 other cars to get gas. We saw lines of people 100+ long waiting with gas cans in hand to get gas. Much of the area was still without power and some of the damage was terrible. On this first night we made our run in, dropped off the supplies we brought, shook a few hands with the people there who very much appreciated our support and then we headed home. On the way we we immediately knew that this wasn’t going to be our only run in. We knew there were thousands of people affected and felt we had to do as much as we could to help in any way possible.
In my next post I will talk about the next run we made in…this time to Plainview, Long Island.