Sean's Stories from Hurricane Sandy

November 5, 2012

Dear Familia,

I'll just let you know up front, I am fine. A little sore, my clothes are trashed but I am fine.

So that first week was a pretty normal week. My new companion's name is Elder Bush. He is a military family (his dad is a doctor for the Air Force) so he is from all over the place. Right now his family is in Albuquerque but he spent most of high school in Mountain Home up by Boise. He is a really hard worker which is good because all we have right now is really hard work, which I will get to later. The college presentation went really well. The teacher was really excited to have us there and there was a lot of good participation from everyone. 

Around Friday we started hearing rumors of a hurricane coming our way. We ended up getting evacuated Sunday night up to Lynbrook. We were holed up in their little house for a couple of days. A tree in the backyard went down, just a few feet from slamming the house and we lost power there on Monday night. Things were pretty calm though. We went back down to Far Rock on Wednesday morning. It's a mess. That's a bit of an understatement. Around our place we lost power that's about it. A few of the lower homes got the basements flooded. But the farther down the peninsula you go the worse and worse it gets. Most of the members live in upper floors of apartments so they are fine other than power loss. Two families are currently homeless however. One of them we cleaned out their basement but there is so much damage the house will probably be condemned. The other family we went down there and there is just nothing we can do there. The water went up about seven or eight feet there and just trashed everything. The sand in the middle of the road that had washed up from the beach was probably about six feet deep. There was a guy digging down to the road. He was waist deep when we left and still had a way to go.

For the most part we are just going down to beach 128th street where we have another member with a flooded basement and that just got established as missionary central. Yesterday we had between 1 and 2 hundred helping hands shirts running around there. The work reminds me a little of moving families into or out of the ward. Except less food storage (woo!) but everything is muddy and waterlogged, so it is dirty and very heavy (boo!) but we don't have to worry about breaking anything (woo!) and are in fact actually encouraged to break things (woo!). Got a big cabinet that needs to be taken out? a few good kicks and we're ready to go. 128th is a better off area so unfortunately a lot of them have washers and driers and fridges and whatnot in the basements, and those don't break very easy. And the geniuses who designed these houses seem to have thought that narrow staircases leading to narrow doors is a good idea. The worst thing I have taken out so far has got to be a futon though. When those things get wet they don't like to move. From the weight of it alone it takes four of us to move it. But the bigger problem is no way to grip it. We ended up using a hammer claw and a crow bar and just hacking into it and dragging it. The work is actually pretty fun, which is good, because here in Far Rock we will be doing this for weeks. Speaking of which I am going to need a new pair of shoes sent out here. Probably the black ones with purple laces would be good. The ones I have right now I am going to have to trash when all is said and done. Slogging around moldy basements gets shoes pretty rocked. Also that other pair of jeans would be very nice.

Our living conditions are fun right now. It feels a lot like camping out. As soon as the sun goes down everything is done by flashlight. We have to boil all of our water before we drink it (we have a gas stove which still works otherwise we would have to move out). No hot showers. That's the worst part. We get back cold and filthy and get to hop into an ice cold shower. We eat a lot of ramen and oatmeal. We don't have refrigeration so all that class of food is gone. Good thing I am quite alright with eating ramen every meal. I am keeping the insulin cool though. That travel pack has two of the little blue ice pack things so I just put one out on the fire escape every night and switch it out every morning. It's in the thirties at night so that is just as good as putting the packs in the fridge. And I only have two vials right now so it fits perfectly. I will need a new shipment of insulin sent out probably this weekend and if we don't have power back by then I will figure out how to store it.

So ya not too much out of the ordinary. My picture might show up in a German newspaper soon. A lady interviewed us and took our picture. Plus a whole lot of other people have been taking pictures, especially the Church News, so keep your eye out there. I am not in a ton of those pictures. Yesterday was when most of those pictures were being taken and I spent most of yesterday just pack muling water pumps and generators around, so not great picture material.

Think that's about it,

Love you all,

Elder Pearce

Another update was just sent....

Well I've got a few more minutes so I figure I will just describe a few of the sights I have been seeing around here. We have seen thousands of cars that are just out of commission waiting to be towed. If you drive past parking lots you see things like BMW's up on top of F-150s. By that member's house that I was talking about with all the sand, there is a chunk about 15 or 20 feet long of the boardwalk in someone's yard about three blocks from the beach. There are police all over the place because of all the looters. You drive down commercial areas and all the buildings are boarded up and are spray painted with things like, "Don't bother, we have already been hit". There were a lot of fires, dad talked about the neighborhood in Breezy Point, most of the fires were commercial buildings though. All over the place you will see big lines of people trying to get food and water and blankets. When you drive down the streets you will occasionally see big clumps of people gathered around generators trying to charge cell phones (we have had to do that a few times). In the streets, especially where missionaries have been, the roads are just lined with garbage piles often more than five or six feet tall.

We haven't been down to the jungle but the bungalows that Diamond and Vanda lived in were almost literally built upon the sand, and I heard that when the rains came down and the floods came up... you know. They haven't fully washed away but I'm sure they are a mess. For a few days there was a naval destroyer parked a few miles out off shore that we got a good look at from our apartment window, that left on Friday. But this morning we were looking out and we are not quite sure yet because it is still a ways off but it looks like an aircraft carrier is pulling up. It sounds like they are bringing up supplies but we joke around that they are for crowd control, in case Far Rock starts getting a little unruly. Because of the power outages it is pretty dangerous to be out after dark so that means we are in every night by like five o'clock. So we have been getting a lot of extra sleep, which is sorely needed right now.  So that's really nice.

Well I think that's about it for now,

Til next week,

Still love you,

Elder Pearce