Hurricane Irene Short Takes

It Could Have Been Worse, But…

Nineteen-year-old Jesse Furtado was at once anxious and grateful that his grandmother finally has her power back on even if he and his mother Linda Maggs do not.

“I have been reduced to listening to baseball on the radio,” Furtado said as he sat, waiting on his staircase inside his apartment; his stuff packed and ready to go for nearly five days. “You don’t understand. My generation, teens like me, we play video games. Without it, well, it sucks.”

Maggs, a nursing assistant who works in Westerly has been living with her autistic son in for three years. Without power as a result of Hurricane Irene since Sunday morning—“I can’t believe it but we’ve been without lights, electricity for four days now. Wow.”

“It’s been hard on both of us. But [her son Jesse] has been really great. When I get home at night, it’s pitch dark at 11 he waits for me, shines the flashlight for me. He’s been so good,” she said.

“It’s just that we’ve lost all our food, nobody has really come around to see if we’re okay and,” Maggs said, pointing to a cooler pressed into service as their refrigerator, “we have no more ice; maybe they could have helped us with some ice.”

Maggs said she didn’t want to complain; it could have been worse. But, “I expected that being elderly, handicapped and low income housing, we’d get power sooner. Guess not.”

Fortunate Even After Spending Nearly 100 Hours Without Electricity

Elle Toth has lived in Brookside for 23 years. Today, despite being without electricity for nearly 100 hours, she considers herself and her husband fortunate.

“We have hot water. Don’t ask me how, but we do,” she said. “Plus, I work and I’m getting a paycheck so we can buy food, but a lot of people in here don’t work; [are] elderly or are [disabled]. So yeah, we’re lucky, I guess. Course, I broke my toe. I tripped in the dark during the storm. But we’re doing the best we can.”

Toth said she is putting off the inevitable: “I’m going to have to throw away all our food from the freezer. We’re making it okay, but [the food] didn’t make it.”

And, she wishes perhaps that residents were permitted to own and use outdoor grills; prohibited by management.

“Then maybe we could have cooked something. That irked me. But what are you going to do,” she asked rhetorically.

In A Dead Zone On A Quest For Food

William Bulluss was making his way across South Broad Street, en route to the building in search of food and water; the town department has been providing residents without power donated instant meals—pouches of prepared foods that simply need salted water to “cook”—and bottled water.

“We’re in a dead zone here,” he said, his omnipresent flashlight peering out of his pocket: “I keep it on me, even in the day I guess.”

Bulluss, who is originally from Preston, Connecticut, has lived at Brookside for one year. “It’s been pretty good until this.”

He returns from his quest for food: “I have to come back in an hour. I can do that. They’re waiting for the food [to be delivered]. I’m not too hungry, but I want to have it in case the power doesn’t come back today either.”

Bulluss too considers himself blessed.

“People on oxygen—there’s a lot of them here—some had to go to the hospital and stay, some have people coming in to [re-charge oxygen units]. I’m lucky that way.”

Bulluss said he was told by “some guy” that power would be restored Thursday, September 1.

“He said he wasn’t a betting man, but I don’t know, we’ll see. Oh, I’ll be okay, I have some friends here.”