We (Me, John & Dawn) went to the Highlands Sunday. A small working class fishing community below route 36 bridge near the sandy hook entrance.
The pictures do not reflect what this place really looked like two weeks ago. I included a map so you can see where I feel people have been hit the hardest.
For every pic I took, imagine the water level being at 18 feet in some cases. This would be almost at the start of the second story.
The water lines were so high in the homes you could not even fathom this actual happened.
We spent most of the morning on Sunday, going house-to-house and giving out what people needed the most. Cleaning supplies, clean socks and underwear, water, and most of all garbage bags, mops, buckets, gloves to help them clean up.
Many of the homes have RED stickers on them and have been declared uninhabitable. This is a working class area. These are not second homes for anyone here. This is where they live. It is a local fishing community. Many of them have lived here their entire lives. Many of these people have lost literally everything. Red Cross & FEMA are present but not mobilizing fast enough.
I’m not sure about the amount of homes we went to but I’m sure you can imagine it didn’t seem like enough.
I could go on and on about how many times I just became so overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was witnessing but it is not going to help by doing so. But here are some heartwarming stories directly from me and what I was a part of just this past Sunday.
The thing that kept me going all day was, very early on in the morning, while handing out supplies house to house, we stumbled upon this home that seemed to be fine between two other homes that were just devastated with red stickers on the front.
There was a young middle aged mother cleaning up the front driveway as best she could and set up café tables and umbrellas as a sort of rest area for the volunteers and her children handed out free bottled water and cookies to the volunteers and even made little crayon drawings to give away. Just hearing them saying thank you to us was something that I cannot even describe. We gave them a box of potato chips to hand out as well to support their moral boosting efforts. I still keep seeing that little girls face saying thank you to everyone. You see, in my mind, I see that they are so unbelievably grateful that they did not sustain the amount of damage that every home around them did and they wanted to give back in a way that injected hope into a hopeless situation.
After this we went to Huddy Park, where they were organizing a local morale booster music event and giving out free food to all the residents and volunteers. After speaking with the organizers of this event we decided to get involved in a deeper way. We took what we had left from the truck which was still several bins full of cleaning supplies, food, baby formula and more, and brought it to the local church on Bay Ave next to the Municipal Building.
After helping them out at the church, the organizer came up to me and asked if we could help out an elderly couple from their church… after hearing about this couple, I could not say no. We gathered up three bins or stuff to bring with us and off we went!
Next stop, Port Monmouth to an elderly couple in their 70’s home, who was taking care of their daughter who was bed ridden with MS and their son just died 5 months ago of Colon cancer and the husband just had a stroke within the past 6 months, and the wife just and a stroke 3 months ago. Now they are dealing with this disaster. The woman and her husband were so sweet. We did basic stuff for them, like cleaning up debris in their yard and flushing out their shed with water due to large amounts of gasoline leaking everywhere from lawn maintenance stuff like mowers, and blowers (which have not been used since their strokes and their son passing away)... they told us how high the water was and from the signs of it, it was unbelievable. Looking at the house now, you couldn’t imagine this actually happened. Toward the end, the husband came out using a walker and he could barely speak as his face was still paralyzed by the stroke. All he wanted to do was try to give us money for everything we were doing to help them. The elderly woman tried to buy us lunch and we refused. Their power was still out and they had no idea that the area that their church was in was completely destroyed. They were not aware because they had no TV. In the end we got their phone numbers so I am going to keep up with them to see if they are ok.
Lastly, a story of divine intervention..
When we finished helping out the elderly couple and their MS stricken daughter, we decided to take the three plastic bins and a handful of large garbage bags with us so we could start another collection this week. But it seems there was a divine intervention on the way out of the area. We ended up near union beach where we saw a local marina where all the boat were tossed on top of each other. We continued to drive through an area where the entire street of homes that all had red stickers on them except a few. There was an entire family that just was pulling debris out of their house so we stopped and asked if they could use help of they needed anything. The woman promptly said YES, if you have garbage bags that would really help. Looking at each other we said yes we do! Do you also need plastic bins and containers. And the woman looked at her husband and said sweetie you can save your tools now. The interaction was so fast, and so needed, right at that time. I realized that things never happen just because. They always happen at the perfect time for a purpose as long as you are ready and willing to act. The amount of community effort we saw was outstanding. This has forever been locked into my memory and I will never forget it.
I know most of you have been to the Jersey shore at some point in your life.
I lived at the shore for the first 28 years of my life and I have seen multiple hurricanes (Opal, Hugo, Andrew) and the demonstration of power and destruction they can cause.
But, I have never seen anything like this before ever. The footprint and area of devastation is staggering. Nearly every landmark shore area has been wiped clean. Every memory that I have ever had, the places I have been, and the fun times I had, are now gone.
I will say that in the end I was most impressed by the level of Love, Compassion, and sense of Hope that everyone had. From what I can see, this is far from being over. You can watch the news and see posts on FBOOK or twitter, but unless you are on the ground in the middle of it, you will never understand the impact and the power of the human spirit.
The shore will recover, and it will be better than ever before and ready to make new memories for the new generations to come!
Jersey Strong!
Theo Tilton
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