sonnet to hurricane sandy

By J.p. Lawrence

The Aftermath

Breezy Point, Queens, N.Y. One of those quaint Long Island beach towns where firefighters and policemen and lawyers spend their summers. Small beach houses, all huddled next to each other.

I was at Breezy Point one week after Hurricane Sandy hit. I saw homes, collapsed on the beach. Telephone poles bent over. Yards flooded. Flags that flew limply in the ocean breeze. A group of U.S. Marines unspooled hoses and pumped water out into the sea.
The night Hurricane Sandy hit, a six-alarm fire destroyed much of Breezy Point. The town is known for its large population of firefighters and first responders, but when the fire trucks came that night, they couldn’t get to the fire, due to the water.
I walked the streets, filled with couches and bed frames, waterlogged and ruined. Rubbish and tree branches and sand everywhere. People’s lives on the pavement, waiting days and days to be picked up. But the garbage trucks had not come. They were overwhelmed.

Recovery

In nearby Rockaway, where the boardwalk was torn apart, National Guardsmen, firefighters, policemen and other first responders set up a distribution point. Families drove up, like they would to a drive-through burger joint, and picked up cases of food and water.
I ran into the captain of the soldiers giving away food. Residents have been asking his soldiers to check up on their homes, or on shut-ins, or to drive them to the nearest pharmacy. “Things that aren’t necessarily in our mandate,” the National Guard captain said. “Stuff you would do for regular neighbors, if you lived next door.”
I took a photo of a woman picking up water. “Ah!” she said. “It’s like I’m a refugee.”
The old National Guard officer was mad as hell. Undeserved credit was being given. The Marines were hungry for publicity, he said, when they stormed Breezy Point and started pumping water. They didn’t follow the rules. The National Guard captain in Rockaway meant well, the old officer added, but he too needed to follow his mandate.

The Fire

Everyone in Breezy Point told me to talk to Brian Doyle. Doyle, a 19-year-old community college student, bartender and volunteer firefighter. Doyle, who with four others, took two boats and headed into the storm.
There was a report of a woman trapped, Doyle said. The water came in so fast; their fire truck wouldn’t work. Six feet of water. Crazy winds and waves. Doyle and his fellow firefighters picked up a man and his dog. A family. More families. Flashlights in windows, they looked for.
Doyle’s father, in particular, wanted me to hear Brian’s story. The story had become a bit of a legend around Breezy Point.
The fire grew and grew. Smoke everywhere. One house was in imminent danger. Doyle kicked the door in. And then the wind changed. Smoked filled the community center where they had been moving all those they had rescued. Embers flew. The fire trucks, miraculously, roared to life in the midst of everything. Everyone loaded onto trucks, and they escaped back to the firehouse. Behind them: fire, and water, and wind, and mud.

Mythology

How does one write about Breezy Point? How does one make sense of an act of God? When we cannot blame man for God’s whims, what can we do besides curse God and make heroes of men?
I’ll always remember how messy it was. How it didn’t look like America, but like Somewhere Else. All those houses in neat rows, ruined. All those children and children of men, creating new mythologies to describe what happened. All those faded American flags, flying limply in the ocean breeze.