The Story with Dick Gordon; 2012-10-31 Riding Out Hurricane Sandy in a Lighthouse; Riding Out Hurricane Sandy in a Lighthouse. Part 1

I'm Dick Gordon, this is the story. Many of us heard the details of Hurricane San, the unfold on the radio, and we looked at the pictures online, or watched the TV people placing themselves out in the wind and the rain. But no one got any closer to the fury of this hurricane than Marge Winsky. She's a lighthouse keeper. She was about as far out in the Atlantic as you could be, when that storm came churning towards land. I'm in the very end of Long Island, of 120 miles from New York City, and Montauk, which is a very point, and we are on the lighthouse, and we're surrounded on three sides by water. The ocean, Long Island, sound, and we're just out in the middle of the water. When did things start to look dangerous? Well, it was dangerous, probably all afternoon. The wind was the worst I've ever experienced out here. I've been out here for a long time, and I've been through many storms, but this wind was unbelievable.

I went up in the tower about four o'clock just to look out, and it was actually shaking. I felt vibrations in the tower before, but never shaking, and I got nervous. This is an old stone heavy lighthouse we're talking about, right? It's over 200 years old. It's built the sandstone. It's been here for 200 years, with every kind of hurricane. I was nervous in that tower, but this is not good, so I came right down, and then the house started shaking. When you say shaking, Marge, if you put a cup of coffee on the table, would you see it jiggling was at that kind of shake? Not up. Yes, you would see some motion in the glass. It was impressive. Wow. That's scary. Yeah, it's very scary. Then when I got down stairs to the keeper's house, the water was lashing in the toilet ball. It was like you were on a ship, and I thought this is not good at all, but the house stood up, thank God. I'm sure the wind was over 100 miles an hour.

What did it sound like? It's just a roar. Everything is as such noise. It's unbelievable. On the top of the tower, there are vents, and the wind comes screaming in the vents. It's deafening. Down stairs are far places in every room, because that's how they used to heat the keeper's house, and they moan when it's windy. So you have this moaning sound, the windows are rattling, and then the ocean you hear the waves crashing into the cliff, it's very, very noisy, very loud. And Marge, were you there by yourself when this was all happening? Yes. Well, I have my Royal Newfoundland dog. I have 150 pound dog, who was quite nervous, actually, during this whole escapadea. Where was he? I wanted to know where he went. In the living room, a curled up in a ball with their toy. I think she was scared stiff, but she actually likes to go out in this weather, and she loves wind and hail and rain, and I don't like it to be out in that, but she was a little nervous last night with this, but we got up at four o'clock in the morning, because we were so,

we were going to see what had happened, the damage, and there was a full moon, we went out with a lantern, and went down by the beach, and surveyed what we could see in the dark, and it was just monumental, the amount of erosion, and it's just incredible, I'm at the wave action. And was that, is that a sand beach there, or is it stone in sand? What have you got? It's stone in sand, and then there are clay cliffs that probably go maybe 80 feet high, and they're in the height of the storm, the waves are crashing into the cliffs about halfway up, and then riding up the cliff and blowing over the top. It was beyond anything I've ever seen, and I could see big chunks of the cliff falling into the ocean, and the ocean was all brown with silk from the cliffs. And when you were up in the tower of the lighthouse, was the spray coming up that high as well? No, it wasn't, no, it wasn't that high, but everywhere you looked from the top was the white water, it was all white everywhere, there was no blue water, it was just completely white.

And what did you see of the change in the water level? Because my recollection is that the height of the water was, came even later than that in the evening. Yeah, I couldn't see in the dark, I mean you could hear it grinding away down the beach, but you couldn't see too well. You could see, I went down this morning, you could see the waves, the cuts in the cliffs, so you could see how high the waves actually got. It was amazing, absolutely amazing, I've never seen anything like it, but the lighthouse held up, and we had a little damage not much, and it's just an incredible place, incredible structure. Did you ever get a final reading from the wind gauge on just how fast the wind was blowing out there? Well, it was 78 in the morning on, I don't even know what day it is, I guess it was Monday morning. It was 78 very early before the storm even got here, and then when I came back, the gauge had broken. So... What, blown right off?

It bent in half, actually, on the roof, so I'm sure it was over a hundred, I'm positive it was over a hundred. And March, when I look at where you are on the map, right out at the tip of Long Island, if things had got any worse than that, was there anywhere for you to go? Well, I could have gone into town, but town is very low, you know, town's about five miles away, and it's low, you know, I would be more concerned about flooding in town than out here. But... So you were actually safer? I felt I was safer here than anywhere, I would just the wind really got to me this time. I thought, well, if the house blown away, you know, what am I going to do, I could go in the cellar, and I had put some valuables in the cellar, I thought, well, a couple things I want to save, I'll put them in the cellar. What had you taken down there? Letters from people, that's the only thing that matters to me. And I had some letters, and I had photographs, and I put them in a box, and I put them in this, like, almost like a cave in the cellar, where they used to keep the whale oil, and I figured that's the safest place, and I put them down there.

And so at the worst of it all, were you thinking to yourself, I'm a lighthouse keeper, I shouldn't be scared by this, but it's starting to get to me. Well, it did. And I kept saying, just calm down, it'll be fine, you know, it's been here 200 years, and it will be fine. Just don't panic, and it was fine, so we got through it. Did you sleep at all? I did, I did. It sort of calmed down around 10, and I think I'll go to sleep and see what happens. And I left the radio, and I was listening to reports from the city, and it sounded awful in New York City, and it's not that bad here, so. And when you got up in the morning, was there anything washed up? No, it was just, well, there was a lot of, like, bundles of sea grass and beach grass, all in tremendous bundles on the beach, and washed into piles, and I had to climb over those to go to the beach, and just chunks of the cliff were gone, and the ocean was still quite rough this morning.

And then the rocks had been thrown up onto the lawn, which I had never seen before. The waves had actually come up onto the lawn, or below the lighthouse as a, we call it the meadow, it started down from the lighthouse, and the waves had actually come up onto the lawn. Rocks, how big thrown up on the lawn? Like baseball-sized rocks, yeah, it was, I had never ever seen that before. So when you tell the story of riding through the night of Hurricane Sandy, what's the one thing that you'll tell people five years from now? The wind, I'll say, the house was shaking, and I was nervous, and when the lighthouse was shaking, I really, I really had my doubts. I feel like, well, the whole lantern room could blow off with me up here, but that scared me. But, you know, we got through, I've been here through some terrible, terrible storms, lightning, and thunder, and all kinds of things, and this was the worst, absolutely. But today's beautiful, we got through it, and...

Most of the time you like it out there, I gather. I love it. I actually do, I love it at almost every moment of it. I mean, the few terrifying moments don't count. There's nothing more beautiful than being here. And you pass time by reading, watching television, walking on the beach? Yeah, and I have another, I have a job. I go to during the day, so I'm here at night. I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of photography, do some writing, and it's just beautiful. Tell me something, Marge, on a night like that, do you feel a sense of duty to be there to keep the light going? Because it is nights like that where someone's more likely to have to depend on a lighthouse than any other time. I do, even though I have no responsibilities really for the light, the Coast Guard maintains the light. And there were no boats out there at night, but I just feel a duty to be here. You never know what might happen, you know. The window might blow out. I feel a... I'm a protector of the building and the whole structure, and I feel very... You know, the windows are leaking, I have to put down towels, I have to make sure things

are... Okay. And... Protect it. But you must be mindful of the fact that someone's sometimes going to be depending on your light. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Most of the time. I knew the last night, there was nobody out in that water. It was just so vicious, all the boats were in, and actually had hauled most of the boats in town out of the water a couple days before, put them on land. There was such preparation for this storm, but there was nothing out at all. No boats. No. No. But you just never know, you know. Marge Winsky is in charge of the Montauk Lighthouse, that's at the Easternmost tip of Long Island. And the name of her newfoundland dog, she's Maggie Thunderposs. Coming up next, we'll hear more from New York City with our own Sean Cole.

And from the scene of last year's Hurricane Irene, we'll hear what happened as people prepared for round two in Vermont. To wind up today's program, in honor of all Hallows Eve, we'll replay one of our most popular stories. The time when Amber Dawn began to suspect that someone, or something, was living in her attic. And so I talked to the landlord the next day, and she was like, no, there's no way anybody can get up there. And I was like, oh, okay. She was like, it's probably just squirrels. I was like, okay, I'm crazy.

Were you okay with that explanation? Well, I'm a little nutty, so that would be the norm. But yeah, it just stayed in the back of my mind, though, that I could assure I heard footsteps. There's someone in the crawl space. That's later on today's program. I'm Dick Gordon from APM, American Public Media. This is the story.