Sandy

It's been 6 weeks now since we survived Hurricane Sandy without even loosing power.  Life is completely back to normal, and there is really no reminder left around here of a massive hurricane! But all you have to do is drive an hour and a half to the east and it's still too obvious that something big happened. Our stake has been sending groups of people every weekend to New Jersey and New York to help with clean up efforts. I've been twice and before I went I wasn't really sure what to expect. What we saw when we got there was pretty shocking.

One town we went to is still closed to any one who doesn't live there. The National Guard is parked there keeping people out 

 This town is right on the coast and really got hit hard. The waves washed tons and tons of sand into the town.

 Our first stop was to shovel sand about two feet deep out of this house's driveway

 The beach is a mess, there is garbage, pieces of boardwalk and broken shells all over

The waves pushed all the sand on the beach up to the houses

Luckily this is a detached garage and not someone's house.

This picture shows really well the water line on the fence. 

 These red papers were on almost all of the houses, they say "Unsafe structure." People couldn't live in them till whoever said they were safe again.

 In this house we cut dry wall (by hand because they didn't have any power), and pried up baseboards and door jams.

Piles like this were everywhere in the streets. It was so sad to see everything people owned in a huge soaking pile on the street.