I guess that’s right, the 11th will be 31 days since I left home. Today, Saturday, is Day 25, Thursday would have been Day 23.
Journeyed out to Bay Head to see some facilities that had been damaged. Not really worth describing those places, but, I did stop and take a few pictures afterwards that are worth talking about.
Bay Head is a one square mile municipality right on the shore that ended up, at least in the places I looked at on Thursday, with about two to four feet of water everywhere. There’s a really cool video that some guy took during and after the storm; it’s worth a watch. Click on the picture below to go to Youtube and watch it.
I think this picture roughly matches up to the shot that I took from the 0:18 second spot in the video. What has happened since then is that all of the sand (and the crap that has been picked up with the sand) has been bulldozed back into place on this bluff that overlooks the beach.
I, like a stupid, thought the beach just ran up to the houses, maybe similar to what I’ve seen in Destin or in Hilton Head. You can see it pretty clearly in the picture from the video; there’s a bluff there that’s about six to ten feet in height. I don’t know, but doubt, that there were gaps in it to get down to the beach, I’m going to assume stairs.
So, for four feet of water to inundate Bay Head, that four feet had to be on top of the eight to ten feet to get over that bluff….
The 3:32 mark in that video shows that bluff right after the storm. That vegetation you see in the first picture? long gone…..
…looking the other way (to the north)….
looking back to the west….you can see there’s a lot of sand and debris here. I understand that there are still negotiations going on about sifting sand before returning it to the beach…..
Literally, at 3:36 in that video, that guy has his camera taking close to this exact shot.
I’m surprised, looking at more of that video, that this area isn’t completely underwater. A lot of the shots from the day after in the video show areas that are completely submerged.
The houses on the beach? aside from the flooding on the first level, the damage seems pretty hit or miss depending on the level of protection installed before the storm hit and the general age of the building.
At about four minutes in the video you can see him looking down this street. If you head down this street now, in about half a mile you’ll meet the National Guard, the sheriff, and a big highway sign flashing “Trespassers Will Be Arrested”…
