Normally, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration busies itself making sure that ships are safe along America’s coastal waterways. But the for past few days, NOAA’s pilots and technicians have been photographing the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey, and comparing the coastlines to photographs taken before the giant storm.
The results, like the photograph of Mantoloking above, are sobering. So is the video below, sent by MyVeronaNJ.com reader Beth Shabazian. It shows what was left of the Thirteenth Avenue Pavilion, which had housed the Matisse restaurant, among other things.
By now, most of us in Verona know of at least one building down the shore that is no more. Maybe it was a family house, maybe it was a friend’s. Maybe it was the rental we remember from college vacations or a family gathering; the restaurant where we gathered to watch the surf or the stand where we picked up souvenirs we didn’t really need. The storm took our buildings, but not our memories and most certainly not our determination to create new memories at a new Jersey Shore.
