And lives are being lost. A man dies after being struck by his garage. A tree falls on a car. A wave hits a house. A boat capsizes.
Someone drowns in a fishing net.
This hurricane will claim 50 on Long Island, and 29 of them will be in Westhampton Beach. As the weather rages, strange sights become commonplace. All of the water is swept from a bay, leaving boats lying in mud. A bird rises, tries to fly into the wind, and is reduced to fragments. A swan is impaled on a broken tree bough and spun by the wind like a grotesque whirligig.