First look at Fire Island after Hurricane Sandy

LONG ISLAND (WABC) -- It's the first time a TV news camera has made it to Fire Island's Davis Park, since before Sandy.

And what Eyewitness News found, could take your breath away.

Entire homes which stood for decades are smashed to bits by Sandy's surge.Seven houses on a prime stretch of beachfront, shoved unmercifully into what's left of the dunes, and mostly unrecognizable.

For some homeowners, there might be something to salvage but for others, not so much. Some houses disappeared practically without a trace.

These were all summer houses in a seasonal resort community. This damage left no one homeless but what happens on this tiny barrier beach can affect Long Island's south shore, in a massive way.

Kathleen Walsh is the acting supervisor of the town of Brookhaven and says if mainland flooding in Suffolk County wasn't bad enough with Sandy, it could get even worse with the next storm.

Thanks to a thousand-foot-wide breach that split Fire Island in two, breaking the barrier that protects the south shore and allowing the ocean to pour right into the great south bay.

"Really the purpose of the barrier island is to protect Long Island," Walsh said.

But today, Senator Chuck Schumer said the National Parks Service, which owns the land that's been breached is refusing to fill in the breach because of a policy that allows nature simply to take its course.

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