Hurricane knocks down trees, power lines in Valley Stream

See more photos of the damage from Hurricane Irene here.

Hurricane Irene took down trees, branches and power lines in Valley Stream, but caused little property damage. At the height of the storm, about 9,000 homes and businesses in the area had no electricity, but that number was down to a few hundred on Tuesday.

After the rain had subsided, Valley Streamers began their cleanup efforts. On Sunday, Mario Verga got some help from his neighbor, Brian Berghorn, clearing branches that fell in front of his East Carpenter Street home in the middle of the night. “It could have been chaos,” Verga said. “We lucked out no one got hurt.”

On East Melrose Street, several limbs snapped off one tree, but residents said they felt lucky that the damage wasn’t extensive. “We did pretty good, actually,” said Catherine Hohill.

She lost power in the middle of the night, Hohill said, but only for about 20 minutes. Her neighbor, John DeAngelis, stayed up during the night to watch over the street, and said that the heaviest rain and wind came between 3 and 4 a.m. on Sunday.

It was after midnight when a pair of trees fell on Elmwood Street, just south of Hollywood Avenue, taking down power lines and snapping a telephone pole. It also damaged four homes’ electric service pipes, which feed wires to the meters.

Chris Steikovski said he heard the telephone pole snap. He wasn’t surprised that one of the trees fell, but was shocked that two went down together. “The ground is so saturated that it made everything vulnerable,” he said.

Steikovski’s wife, Rosalie, said that Fire Department responded within 10 minutes of their call. She was concerned about the power being out, and food in her refrigerator started to spoil by Sunday afternoon. “We’ll have to go to bed at sundown — we can’t do anything,” she said.

Village responds