Some moments mark us permanently. For me, a few live in a strange kind of clarity—the kind that lets you recall the smell in the air, the tone of a stranger’s voice, the feel of your breath catching in your throat. Living in New York during 9/11, I remember exactly where I was: a dentist’s chair in Westchester, hearing the phone ring again and again—until it didn’t. For two days, the silence was deafening.

Then there was Hurricane Sandy. A different kind of terror, but one that has never left me.

At the time, I was living in suburban comfort, in a warm, well-lit home with my three small children. When the call came from the American Red Cross asking if I would volunteer as a photographer, I said yes without hesitation, not knowing that I was about to step into the raw, shattered heart of loss.

I drove into Staten Island alone, camera in hand, naïve and wholly unprepared for what it meant to document devastation on the front lines. I remember the drive from my tree-lined street, where leaves crunched underfoot and Halloween decorations still fluttered on porches, into what looked like a war zone. Trees uprooted. Boats impaled on buildings. Entire houses gone—not damaged, just…gone.

It was there I met Gerard Spero.

He was searching for a figurine. A delicate 1929 ballerina that had once belonged to his niece, Angela. She was 13. The home she had lived in was now a pile of debris, indistinguishable from the rest of the neighborhood. Gerard told us, in the quietest voice, that the last message he’d received from Angela was a plea: “Help.” She had texted as the water rose, and he’d tried to call 911, waited on hold with an overwhelmed dispatcher, and finally texted back, “Help is coming.” But it wasn’t. Not in time. Angela, her mother Patricia, and father George had fled to the attic. But the surge from Raritan Bay lifted the entire house off its foundation. Patricia survived, clinging to telephone wires with one hand and her daughter with the other. Angela’s body was found blocks away. Her father’s body, two days later.

Gerard spent his days combing through wreckage, hoping to find a keepsake. A button. A photograph. That porcelain ballerina. Anything. We didn’t find the figurine, but we found fragments—of a life, of love, of a girl who’d danced.

And then there were others. A man in a Sunday suit, perched on a suitcase like a throne in the middle of a parking lot. He lit a cigar, not out of celebration but resignation. Everything he owned now sat beneath him. He tipped his hat when I asked to take his photo, then invited me to sit beside him. In a world flattened by water, this man had somehow managed to hold onto dignity.

There were so many faces I will never forget. But one in particular still makes me smile.

Andy Harris was not a local. He was a 53-year-old volunteer from Chorley, England—sunny-eyed, soft-spoken, and entirely unforgettable. I met him at the Red Cross bulk distribution center at Miller Field on Staten Island, where he worked tirelessly, unloading supplies, organizing donations, always the first to lend a hand and the last to call it a day. Andy didn’t ask for anything in return. He didn’t even take a bed, choosing instead to sleep in a tent onsite—“I’d hate to take a spot someone else might need,” he told me with a grin.

How he ended up there was nothing short of extraordinary. After traveling across Europe and Asia by bicycle and motorbike, he made his way to the U.S. through Mexico, eventually landing in New York by way of Houston and North Carolina. With no plan and no destination, he arrived on the Staten Island Ferry, asked around for where help was needed, and joined the Red Cross without hesitation. His philosophy? “When you’re down and out, there’s nothing like giving back to make you feel better.”

I’ll never forget the moment a friend emailed me a Red Cross postcard that had been sent around the country. On it, a photo of me handing Andy a supply pack. It was a small gesture in a sea of effort, but it captured the kind of quiet humanity that defined those days.

Inside homes, the damage wasn’t always visible from the outside. Walking through neighborhoods in Rockaway, I remember seeing porches decorated with pumpkins, curtains still drawn in windows. But inside, the rot had begun—walls blackened with mold, furniture toppled and warped, children’s toys scattered in mud. And behind it all, the cruel reality: insurance companies stalled, FEMA prioritized those without private policies, and residents with coverage were stuck in a bureaucratic no-man’s-land.

A week later, I returned—this time not with my camera alone, but with a caravan of cars from Irvington, our small village 40 miles north. My neighbors had rallied. Led by a local chef who turned his shop into a donation hub, we collected food, warm coats, baby formula, pet supplies, and cleaning products. We drove into East Rockaway as another storm approached. The team at the local school welcomed us with gratitude that was both humbling and heartbreaking. They had so little. Our supplies were few—but they mattered. Every flashlight. Every trash bag.

In a nearby church, a pastor told us what he needed most: bleach. Diapers. Batteries. And yet I noticed, tucked among the boxes, a pair of ballet slippers—fragile and out of place. I thought of Angela. I wondered if they might somehow find a child who needed to remember the shape of a dream.

Ten minutes before we had to leave, I took my camera out again. Rain threatened. The light was gray, flat. From the window of the car, I captured homes that looked fine—until you looked closer. Until you saw the boarded windows, the police tape, the dark line on the siding where the water had climbed. There was one photo I couldn’t take: a family huddled around a firepit in their driveway, roasting marshmallows because the power was still out, and there was nowhere else to go. I didn’t raise my camera. I just stood with them.

It was during those days that I learned photography is not just a way of seeing—it’s a way of witnessing.

The lens gave me proximity, but the stories gave me purpose. And it was Hurricane Sandy, and the people who lived through it—Gerard, Angela, Andy—that taught me what it means to tell a story with compassion. To document not just loss, but resilience. It was in the ruins of Staten Island and Rockaway that I first began to understand the power of imagery—not to exploit pain, but to honor survival.

That experience changed me. It opened my eyes to the fragile, irreplaceable beauty of what people fight to protect—not just their homes, but their histories. Their children. Their hope.

And that, ultimately, is where my journey into environmental storytelling began. Through the lens, I found a way to connect, to remember, and to defend the places and people we cannot afford to lose.

By Nikki Baxendale

Documentary photographer and environmental storyteller, working at the intersection of human resilience and wild beauty.