Destruction from Hurricane Irene

After Tom emailed me pictures from TS Lee on Wednesday I realized I had never got his emailed pictures from Irene just a week before. Don't forget to biggie-size for more detail. The first four are taken with his mobile phone (and I am not sure what towns they are from)...I knew things weren't going well by the language he used...he never txts like that.

Tom was stationed in Oneonta, NY for just over a week but the crews were given a daily work site that was anywhere within a 1.5 hour driving radius...that included sites in Pennsylvania. I won't tell you the 3 letter abbreviation that came with this photo...use your imagination.

This photo was titled "Irene is a b****." In one text I was trying to lighten the mood and asked what fun things he was doing knowing that sometimes he was playing hurry up and wait. He answered none because it was hard watching little kids who had no home or place to go. Ugh.

He also told me several times that what he was looking at could have just as easily been damage from Katrina. This particular image was labeled "Holy **** I'm in New Orleans."

The house that belongs on this foundation can be seen in the very back of the photo.

The remaining pictures are from Prattsville, a particularly hard hit little town at the edge of the Catskill Mountains. Tom told me to picture Main Street in our town of Castile (maybe 2 miles long) just completely wiped out. About 75% of the people didn't want the electric boxes replaced on the remains of their houses - they had had enough floods and were moving on.

This double-wide was washed about 500 feet off it's foundation, who knows how far it would have traveled if the tree didn't stop it.

You could see the damaged houses but Tom said people were also just piling their wet belongings street side to wait for garbage removal. Dumpsters were everywhere. The piles of what was left of people's lives grew to be quite large.

The flood washed out 8 feet of dirt from UNDER this gorgeous Victorian - it's still in it's original location.

This is a 100,000 pound dot sand blasting trailer. Can you see the dirt washed out from under it? Where the guy dressed in blue is standing? This massive piece of equipment was only supported by one wheel and stiff legs. You wouldn't catch me standing down there.