Outside, sand, debris, glass and pieces of boardwalk covered the road, and the National Guard patrolled the streets.
We return to Llanbedrog on the final day, take a shovel each and start digging out a long-forgotten boardwalk covered with sand.
There was a foot of sand in Convention Hall, and the track, stored in a building on the boardwalk, was covered in ocean grit.
As survivors ran for cover, television images showed a grisly scene with charred body parts, and merchants trying to cover the blackened boardwalk with newspaper.
It is 2,700 square feet and has a boardwalk to the beach, a fireplace, covered and open porches and two and a half bathrooms.
But throughout the hearing, speakers from the public castigated concrete, some holding up pictures that showed experimental concrete sections of the Coney Island Boardwalk that were cracked, chipped or covered in ice.
The choppy Long Island Sound surf already covered much of the beach at Rye Playland and was almost at boardwalk level.
Inside Public Comfort Station 2 on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, even the trash receptacles are clothed, their utilitarian metal covered in burgundy fabric.
At Resorts International, where ocean-facing windows were once covered with brick, the new Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant spills on to the boardwalk, across from the Landshark bar, where a song by Kenny Chesney was blaring on a recent afternoon.
Parts of the Boardwalk had been obliterated, and cars were parked at odd angles, tossed about by the floodwaters as if they were Matchbox toys, some still covered in inches of sand.
