Westerly is a small town of 23,000 or so during the winter, but in the summer, the town swells to over 50,000. Tourism is the main industry. Growing up, all of my friends worked as life guards, beach parking lot attendants, food shack cooks and servers, and at little boutiques. Almost all of that was destroyed.
I do have to say one thing about my little town, it sure is resilient. The washed away dunes are rebuilt, the beach shops and restaurants are almost complete, and the town is advertising for a Spring Festival [this weekend] and Memorial Day Weekend [the unofficial start of the season].
Here are a few photos from my recent trips back home. If you want a real look at Westerly immediately after the storm, watch the video at the bottom from the day after Sandy.
my favorite mini golf course, across the street from the beach
yes, those are people next to the sand brought in to rebuild the dunes
sifting through tons of garbage
dune rebuilding
and creating tons of walls along the beach for future protection
- Those images for the first minute and a half with the bulldozer and man running? That was a road.
- See where the water is at 3 minutes? There used to be dunes there, and the water is usually back another 500 or so feet.
- That's a house in the middle of the road after the 4 minute mark.
- At 4:12, look at how low the stop sign appears to be to the ground - that's how much sand is on the road.
Here are some photos from my hometown newspaper over the course of the storm.
Linking up with Heather and Ashley for Home Town Hop today.
11 comments:
Wow! That's awful! I'm so happy to see that y'all are resilient though and rebuilding your little town! One of my Disney roommates lost her house in Hurricane Sandy, so I heard all about it from here while it was going on! She is in NJ though. Thanks for linking up and sharing today Meg!
I like what you said about your town being resilient. It's amazing to see the communities work together to recover from Sandy’s devastation.
The picture of the sand brought in to rebuild the dunes... reminds me of Egypt!
Thanks for linking up and sharing the rebuilding process in ayour community
Oh my goodness! Thank you for sharing this. It definitely opened my eyes to the destruction that our country is still facing!
Hurricane Sandy was devastating for sure, but seeing all these towns and cities rebuild themselves has been awesomely inspiring. Thanks for posting this!!!
Wow, what a tragedy to have such a beautiful place damaged like that. Westerly and Misquamicut are definitely a couple places that I miss visiting from living up north and it's sad to see that I'll probably never get to see them the way they used to be again :(
Sandy scared the crap out of me. We never get let out of work early and they actually sent us home. We still have claims that are being paid out, there was so much damage.
It's good to see that Westerly is re-building :) We should head to the beach this summer :)
Oh my goodness. I feel so lucky that we don't live anywhere near hurricane/tornado country.
Wow! Absolutely tragic and amazing...such a scary time for everyone.
It's so sad to see what one storm can do to a place. I am going back to the Jersey shore next week for the first time since Sandy, I am anxious to see how it looks.
Yessss, we definitely should go to Misquamicut! Have you ever been down there before? It's seriously so much fun. Oh, and we could try and spot Taylor Swift haha. Did you see she bought a house in my town?
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