kellymarino

kellymarino: Greetings from HELL...or, from New York (same zip code, though).

On a good note, my family and I are OK. But, Staten Island is NOT OK. We truly are The Forgotten Borough. The Red Cross waited until Thursday night to pay us a visit. FEMA waited until yesterday to show up...Of all the people in the "Tri-State" area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) who lost their lives, the majority of them were Staten Islanders. There is a 200-foot-long tanker sitting on land, all the marinas and boats are GONE, houses have been swept off their foundations, business owners no longer have their businesses, families with small children have no food, water, clothing, or shelter; you name it. Utter devastation everywhere.
I apologize for ranting on and on, but I have never seen anything like this in my life. Good old Buena Park, California (where I was born and raised) was pretty immune to stuff like this.

On a very sad personal note, there is a family who lived next door to us (we moved away about 10 years ago...living right there in a beach front house on the Atlantic Ocean began to bother us...) on the south shore of Staten Island, on Yetman Avenue in a section called Tottenville (a Google search will get you news stories and images to make your hair stand on end)--I used to babysit their daughter; well, her parents refused to evacuate, and, as a result, the girl and her father are dead. The mother is clinging to life in the hospital. They decided to stay because last year they evacuated for Hurricane Irene and got robbed...

My old house is about to be bull-dozed down (I raised my kids there, so I am pretty upset). My point here is, no matter what you do, you MUST evacuate when there is a damned hurricane headed your way. I BEG you, PLEEEEZE listen to your officials when they tell you to seek shelter! Get your ass out of there. You can replace any material goods, but you can never replace your family members.

We just got power in our house last night, and our phone service and heat just came back on. Until last night, I saw no images on TV or the internet, heard nothing (no power, or gasoline, for that matter) and we could not get one damned newspaper. It is as though we were stuck in the 18th century.
Oh, and they are forecasting another storm for this week.

Well, I should stop venting now, as I am sure you, and the rest of the world, have been bombarded with this disaster since it started. We have only just seen it all!
Thanks for allowing me to vent,
Kelly Marino