Editor's Notebook: Coming Back Home to Evacuate

I was hundreds of miles away from Long Island on Friday when I got the word to evacuate.

Yet, I couldn’t help but feel that I had to get back home — to the evacuation zone — that night.

I was visiting family in the Binghamton area, talking to Five Towns mayors and other officials on the phone to continually update Five Towns Patch (working from anywhere is a true perk of the Internet age). I received an e-mail that County Executive Ed Mangano issued the mandatory evacuation order in the late afternoon, as I was on the phone with Cedarhurst Mayor Andrew Parise. At that point, the mayor did not know about the order.

On Friday, before Hurricane Irene moved anywhere near Long Island, no one could be sure how much damage would be caused. The thought had stuck with me that my current location was way safer than being home. Still, I could not risk being stuck upstate had the roads been flooded and the bridges closed.

I got back to my Oceanside home around 2 a.m. Saturday. The next morning, I packed what I needed and safeguarded all my valuables a safe distance from the floor — in case of flood.

Since my parents live in Woodmere — like many others, they decided to tough out the storm — I bunked with a friend in Queens.

We waited. The rain started pouring. Then we went to sleep.

The next morning, the storm didn’t seem quite as bad as it was made out to be. As I drove through the Five Towns, surveying the damage that seems to have amounted to a few downed trees and power lines, I’m glad the projections were wrong. But I still would have followed the same course.