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Boots on the ground report from another forum:

Ok, trip report from me so far:

I got down here to Long Island (south shore of Nassau County) yesterday afternoon. As many of you know, my father had a stroke Monday AM and was in the hospital for 3 days during the hurricane, with no ability to call in or out of the hospital.

Personally speaking, things are looking up by a lot. Their power came back on Wednesday night (after I bought all that power equipment of course LOL) and my father got released from the hospital the same day.
He’s very tired but ok - it was a mild stroke and it appears that he’s regained all the function in his arm and leg.

Power to the neighborhood is slowly coming back on. Across the street and down the street is still out.

I took a walk around the neighborhood this PM and saw that EVERY block had at least one “tree event” on it - either a large tree or huge branch that fell down and took down the power lines. Multiply that by the number of blocks on Long Island and the true scope of the problem becomes apparent.

Driving is...interesting. People haven’t slowed down or gotten any less rude, but most of the traffic lights are out. Think of the chariot scene in Ben Hur LOL.
I had to go to the pharmacy in the next town today to get new meds for Dad and it was nerve wracking.

I saw trees through houses and trees on top of cars. Most of what came down were LARGE trees. The smaller ones didn’t seem to have much trouble. One huge one that came down down the street ripped up the ENTIRE sidewalk in front of the house. The sidewalk is now perpendicular to the ground.

The neighbors are being wonderful. They kept an eye on my mom while before I got here while my dad was in the hospital. We’re sharing what we have - food, gas, alcohol LOL. Enough power is on that the ones that still don’t have power have gone to their relatives in the area during the day, they come back to sleep at night usually.

A couple of my parents friends came over today around lunchtime. The husband is on a nebulizer for COPD, and the neighbors generator he’s been relying on is nearly out of gas. I sent them home with a full 2.5 gal can. They were headed for the grocery store - they were completely out of food. They’re smart people but didn’t prep. My mother always has a stash of food so we’re good here for another couple of weeks.

Now for the bad stuff:

The businesses in the north end of my town are boarded up to prevent looting. Lootie and his cohorts are lurking around there but not doing anything overt yet when I drove through.

There is or was actual looting in the following places: Long Beach, Coney Island, Babylon, Wantagh, and West Hempstead. Long Beach is in such bad shape that the Nat Guard is there and that stopped the looting. In Coney Island a bunch of thugs broke into a gun store and used the weapons to take over the police precinct (heard this from the neighbors husband who works for NYC and whose brother is a cop). Looting there is rampant and the police have given up, for now. Wantagh looting got stopped, not sure how. Babylon no more info. West Hempstead it was the pharmacy that is a branch of the one that I went to today for Dads meds.

Gas situation is getting crazy. I still have 7 1/2 gallons left of what I brought down but am only doling it out for life threatening situations (like the COPD guy) or to keep people who need to check on other people from running out of auto gas. There are fistfights at the gas stations. People parked their cars in line in the middle of the roadways overnight so as not to lose their spot in line.

The northern edge of the “no gas zone” was Newburgh NY, yesterday. Not sure where it is today.

Cell service has been very spotty, but is improving. A tree fell and took out my parents cable so they have no phone but cell and no internet. Im on a cell modem that is working but not great.

Lessons from this so far:
1) Know your neighbors and make damn sure you have good ones.
2) Don’t live anywhere near the Gibsmedats.
3) Gasoline is the rate-limiting input for any sort of recovery, and the availability of it or lack thereof (regionally or personally) affects EVERYTHING.

I’ll keep you updated, but so far things are under control in my little world.

And I do have Mr. Mossberg with me so if control is lost I can get it back