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| Billy Stinson comforts his daughter Erin Stinson as they sit on the steps where their cottage once stood on August 28, 2011 in Nags Head, N.C. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images. |
Above is one of the more compelling images of Hurricane Irene's aftermath. Anyone who's ever lost everything in a destructive storm can relate to it.
From ABC News:
Captured by Scott Olson of Getty Images, it’s a photo of a devastated dad, comforting his daughter on a set wooden steps surrounded by water. The staircase is all that remains of their 108-year-old family cottage, swept away by Hurricane Irene.
The Stinson family – dad Billy, wife Sandra and daughter Erin – lost the cottage on Albemarle Sound at Nags Head, North Carolina, Sunday to the storm.
”We pretended, just for a moment, the cottage was still behind us and we were sitting there watching the sunset,” Erin Stinson said of the photo.
The Stinson’s turn-of-the-century home was built in 1903, one of the first vacation homes built on Albemarle Sound. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The cottage found itself in the eye of Hurricane Irene, and the results were devastating. The hurricane first made landfall on North Carolina’s famed Outer Banks, destroying vulnerable beach houses along the shoreline before ripping up the East Coast, causing 40 deaths and still untold amounts damage.
The Stinsons, the home’s owners since 1963, say their neighbors and the community are helping them get through this tough time.
A May 2010 story in Our State magazine tells the story of the Stinson’s family home.
Ms. Stinson is there, too. Barely visible to his left.
ReplyDeleteHope their still-standing neighbors took them in.
Also hope volunteers from that community help them rebuild, without using federal taxes.