And now, the cleanup

“The beach was out of control — the ocean was out of control,” Ohio Avenue resident Billy King said on Sunday, a few days after he decided to hunker down with his family and ride out Hurricane Irene despite a mandatory evacuation order issued for the barrier island and much of the South Shore.

Though King, who lives across the street from his parents with his wife and kids, had put up plywood and piled sandbags around his home, he said that the entire street was flooded with three feet of water. But by noon Sunday, he said, it was mostly gone.

“It was rainy and windy all night long,” he said. “At around midnight, I started wondering whether or not I made the right decision. … We had about a foot of water in our home, but we never lost power. Nothing really happened until the tide started coming up at 7 a.m. Within 15 minutes, it went from a puddle to three feet.”

As the storm moved away, King and many others began the arduous task of cleaning up its aftermath, pumping out flooded basements, discarding damaged belongings and waiting for the power to come back on.

As of Tuesday, 3,950 Long Beach residences and businesses were still without power, and the Long Island Power Authority was not expected to have power fully restored until Sunday, City Manager Charles Theofan said. City crews continue to repair the damage caused by massive flooding and 33 downed trees that pulled down power lines, tore up sidewalks and damaged property.

“We’ve been sending out extra trucks around town for people who are putting their ruined things out on the curb — people hate to look at it, and it reminds them of what they’ve been through,” Theofan said. “And the other problem is, although we’d like instantaneous service from LIPA, the reality is there are other parts of the island that have the problem as well.”

“It’s really, really bad,” Councilman John McLaughlin, a Bay Drive resident, said on Sunday, after Irene created a storm surge so powerful that it broke through a 15-foot-high berm at National Boulevard, lifted Beach Patrol Headquarters off its foundation and slammed it into the boardwalk.