Deputy Mayor: "It Was Like a War Zone"

Donning a fireman's coat reserved for the village officials during emergencies, Lindenhurst Deputy Mayor Kevin McCaffrey was one of the first responders during Hurricane Sandy, manning a payloader to help residents throughout the night.

"I was out driving with the mayor that night and we got a call from the fire chief about South Sixth Street," McCaffrey recalled. "The water... we were up to our knees and we weren't even close to the fire yet."

By the time McCaffrey and Mayor Thomas Brennan made it to the scene, the first home on South Sixth Street was engulfed by flames and a second had caught from the winds blowing the fire to it.

"It appeared as though every house after that was going to go on fire and our high water rescue trucks couldn't make it down there – they were floating away," McCaffrey recalled.

Town Supervisor Richard Schaffer ordered in payloaders to help assist firefighters in battling the potentially out-of-control blaze. As soon as the fire was put under some control, another call came in from Willow Lane. In the confusion, McCaffrey, official jacket on, was told to get in the payloader to head to the next scene.

"I'm no fireman," McCaffrey said with a laugh. "I thought I was just showing the driver where to go."

Heading down Shore Road to find the burning home, the pair faced a new issue – high water causing a lack of visibility for the roadway.

"The water was so high it was up over the pilings, you didn't know where Shore Road began and ended," he said. "Boats were floating right across and it was pitch black... we really thought we'd end up in the canal."

Finally appearing on the scene, McCaffrey helped knock water onto the burning home there. Minutes later, another call, he said, brought them to a third home burning.

"I ended up in the middle of it more so than I ever thought I was going to," he said. "It was quite an experience and you just didn't what was going to happen. It was a scary time."

Once the storm pulled away and flood waters began to recede, the damage began quite clear, McCaffrey said. Sunrise on October 30 revealed a new landscape to the deputy mayor.

"It was like a war zone down here," he said. "People were coming back to their homes... and the looks on their faces. Everyone was saying the same thing – 'I've lost everything.'"

While Lindenhurst residents did lose a lot from homes to possessions and cars to boats, McCaffrey noted the bright side was no one in Lindenhurst died during the storm. The emotional toll, though, was dramatic.

"They looked like they had been through a war in a daze," he said.

McCaffrey credited volunteer efforts like Camp Bulldog and Adopt-A-House for helping to bring the Lindenhurst residents back out of that post-traumatic daze.

"People from all over came down and really came together," he said. "It started with Camp Bulldog and a few hot trays of food and it just grew."

The spirit of Lindenhurst that showed after the storm, he said he hopes, will be the legacy of the storm – not all that was lost.

"It was a real tough time, and they got us through it," McCaffrey said. "This sense of community came out of this... and to realize they had friends and neighbors that cared."

He added: "It just shows that, in a time of need, people here stepped up and did what they needed to do."