Baldwin still weathering Irene

Although the winds have by now blown past, massive numbers of downed trees along with flooding and power losses mean Irene has left a significant mark on Baldwin. Although the predominating thought voiced in the wake of the storm was that the hamlet dodged a bullet, the sentiment proved cold comfort to residents left with wrecked boats or vehicles or flooded homes.

Although she was downgraded to tropical storm status as she hit the metropolitan area, Irene brought heavy rains and high winds that wreaked havoc on roadways, toppled trees and power lines and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity.

Baldwin experienced the heaviest weather early Sunday morning, between 2 and 5 a.m. In fact, by the time most residents awoke, the rain had already passed. Heavy winds, however, blew across the area for the remainder of the day.

Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano ordered the evacuation of the South Shore on Saturday, and the county and the Town of Hempstead opened more than two dozen shelters that were filled with thousands of Long Islanders.

The Long Island Power Authority reported that during the height of the storm, fully half a million homes and businesses were without electricity. Customer service centers were closed so workers could focus on repairs. Many of the outages were caused when trees fell into power lines.

LIPA brought in repair crews from western states, but officials expected it to take several days to get power to everyone.

On Monday, after the storm had passed, Town Supervisor Kate Murray twice visited Baldwin to view the work of crews who were clearing trees. “So far we’ve cleared six trees in Baldwin alone, Murray said. “Some of these were huge. There was a massive tree down on Harvard and Pine. Clearing the downed trees is our priority right now. At last report we have about 300 downed trees town-wide and more are coming down today, Monday. With the wet ground over the last few weeks and, obviously, the storm over the weekend, a lot of trees that had been thinking about falling are coming down today, even though the storm’s passed.”