Sandy-ravaged Breezy Point braces for Hermine

Publish date: 2024-08-13

Breezy Point residents are bracing for one of the biggest tropical storms to hit New York City since Hurricane Sandy.

“I’m very concerned,” said Kathleen Fitzsimmons, a retired teacher whose family has lived in the Queens community for 90 years.

“It’s a little scary. I’m taking everything off the deck. Unhooking the gas, tying everything down.”

Fitzsimmons said she was “traumatized” by Sandy — and still regrets not evacuating in advance of the 2012 storm.

“We lost our black lab, Bailey,” she said. “Our house was completely on fire. We were in it. We had to kick out windows and swim.”

Sandy destroyed about 350 of the 2,837 homes in the area. Many of them burned down during a fire that spread amid the storm.

Mary Ellen Carroll said she’s also “nervous” about Tropical Storm Hermine, which could bring severe flooding to coastal communities over the long weekend.

“We’re putting the outside furniture together and putting a rope around them,” she explained. “We had seven feet of water in the basement during Sandy.”

Her husband, Ed, was not as concerned about the wretched weather.

“I’m not nervous,” he insisted. “We’ll definitely get beach erosion but I think we’ll be fine. We’ll have our furniture down. I have a generator, we have gas.”

Ed Carroll said he’s putting his faith in Breezy Point’s new dune system, which was built to protect the community after it was devastated by Sandy.

“I think it will work,” he said. “We’re keeping an eye on the winds.”

Carroll and other community members said this weekend is really all about Breezy Point’s annual Mardi Gras celebration — and they won’t let the storm spoil their fun.

“There will be 500 people on the streets,” Carroll said. “Mardi Gras has never been canceled. We’ll be all right.”

Breezy Point resident Ray Potter, 80, had a similar feeling.

“[I have] no concerns,” he said. “I’ll just put my bike away and have a martini.”

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