Luis Santana took refuge from the storm with his young kids and pregnant wife in a city school. Across town, a 60-year-old Vietnam vet rode out the hurricane with his Bible in a bus shelter.
As the city survived the destruction brought upon other shoreline towns, the hurricane campers found their own ways to survive the storm.
Santana and his sons, 2‑year-old Johanei and 4‑year-old Dominic Michael, (pictured) were among 32 people who took advantage of an emergency shelter opened by the city at King-Robinson School on Fournier Street. Sunday morning found them munching ham sandwiches as Tropical Storm Irene battered the city outside.
Irene was a hurricane until Sunday morning, and brought torrential rain and high winds to bear on the city, downing trees and cutting power throughout New Haven overnight and into the morning. Read Independent storm coverage here, here, and here.
As part of emergency preparations Saturday night, the city opened two emergency shelters, one at King-Robinson and the other at Benjamin Jepson school on Quinnipiac Avenue. People there were given cots, blankets, and food, and a warm and dry place to wait out the rough weather. Mayor John DeStefano said Sunday that 150 people took shelter in the city’s two emergency locations.
John, a 60-year-old who declined to give his last name, got to know Irene more intimately. He spent the night huddled under a poncho in a street corner bus shelter at Edgewood and Boulevard. He shrugged off the storm.
At 10:15 a.m., he was bent over underneath a yellow poncho, wrapped in a plaid blanket and reading a book on the New Testament, along with the Bible. His belongings were collected around him and he was using a wheeling walker as a study desk.
John said he usually sleeps on a bench in Edgewood Park, but with a hurricane coming in, he decided to take extraordinary precautions by moving into the bus shelter. Irene was no big deal, he said with a smile.
He said he feels safer out of doors than in. “I’m more afraid of being in the house.”
John said he remembers 1985’s Hurricane Gloria, which he also greeted in person, walking around downtown.
Just on the other side of the Boulevard, an enormous tree had toppled, narrowly missing a house. John said he didn’t even notice it happen. “You didn’t hear no sound. That’s just it.”
He said he was well fed, having just eaten some macaroni and cheese and a peanut butter sandwich that a neighbor had given him.
Lipka (left) and DeAngelo.
At noon, the 32 people camped out in King-Robinson’s auditorium were tucking into some food too. School lunch deliverers Bob Lipka and Sal DeAngelo dropped off crates of sandwiches from the school system’s central kitchen, along with milk and juice.
Santana, who’s 34, took his lunch with his sons on their cots amidst a collection of stuffed animals. As the kids bounced and chewed happily, Santana said he and his wife decided to head to the shelter at 6 p.m Saturday night. “Our house is not structurally sound,” he said.
The family lives on Bristol Street off of Dixwell, he said. With a wife seven-months pregnant, two young boys, and no plywood for windows, Santana said he didn’t want to risk sticking around there.
The accommodations at King-Robinson are good, he said. He slept well on his narrow cot, only waking when a new downpour of rain sounded on the roof.
On the other side of the auditorium, 18-year-old Jonathan Vasquez was sitting on a cot with his five-member family. He said he had just arrived. His parents had come the night before from their home near Southern Connecticut State University, but he had waited in the house. Boredom led him to join them, he said.
A woman who gave her name only as Ivelisse said she walked over from Blake Street Saturday night, pushing her 4‑month-old in a stroller. The little girl — “my angel” —was the reason she came, Ivelisse said. “I have a daughter and I want to protect her with my all.”
She said she was worried about branches flying through her windows. “I have a lot of trees around my house.”
Another woman, there with her three kids, said she lives by the water near the border of West Haven. That was too dangerous a spot to be, she said. She fed her 1‑year-old fruit punch at one of the cafeteria table set up at the rear of the auditorium.
She said the shelter cot was a fine place to spend the night. “It’s a bed, I guess. It’s not a California king but it’s OK.”
Her other two kids — 4 and 7 years old — ran around happily. “They’re having fun,” mom said. “It’s like a camp-out.”
