‘A forest no more’: A Consider This staffer reflects on Superstorm Sandy

Editors' note: Shaukat Hamdani is a production assistant on the Consider This team.

I live in the South Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, around 300 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. Last year when Superstorm Sandy hit Staten Island, I was in Evacuation Zone 1. My family and I decided to move out and go to higher ground to ride out the storm. The next day when I came back to check up on our neighborhood, everything had changed drastically. I took these pictures to document the havoc that Sandy caused.

Right behind my apartment building there used to be a forest, which was mostly blown away by the storm. I remember that despite being so close to the ocean, the forest used to block our view of the water. But Sandy took care of that. As you can see from the picture above, now we have a clear view of the ocean.

Looking around the neighborhood, one thing that I immediately noticed was that suddenly there were cargo containers littered in side streets and back alleys. Walking down a residential street, I stumbled across one nestled between residential homes. The surprising thing about this container was that there was no cargo ship to be seen near South Beach. So it was a real mystery where the containers came from. Maybe they came from a cargo ship docked inside New York Harbor or maybe they came from the 184-ft oil tanker that washed ashore on the north shore of Staten Island. I asked around the neighborhood and searched online to find out where the containers had come from, but I still don’t know.

Right beyond South Beach, there is a boardwalk and after that there is a park. Lush green playing fields, parks for children, water fountains, bocce courts and bike trails are just a few things that can be found in the park. But when Sandy hit, it felt like the beach had just taken over the park. As you can see in the picture above, the only thing sticking out of the sand was a bench. There was no way to tell that there used to be a bike trail or a lawn underneath the sand.