N. Babylon's Tony Brown Honored for Post-Sandy Efforts

North Babylon resident Tony Brown was recently among 10 Long Islanders to be honored as a "Community Hero of Hurricane Sandy." 

Brown and his family were recognized at Farmingdale's Republic Airport by the Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach and had the chance to meet the GEICO Skytypers pilots. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Brown ran one of the area's very few shelters for displaced animals on the Riverhead campus of Suffolk Community College. He also, along with other volunteer members of Suffolk County's Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), worked in Babylon Village after the storm doing house-by-house analysis to see which damaged homes could have gas and electric restored and be inhabited. 

Brown, who has been a member of CERT since 2005, said the Riverhead shelter housed about 60 animals and 90 people for about a week after the storm.

"We had been training and doing drills for several years," Brown said, adding that Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 "was a learning experience so when Sandy hit us, we were much better prepared. It went very smooth." 

Brown said he was surprised when he learned he had been named a Sandy Community Hero. 

"My reaction was very straightforward, I was shocked," he recalled. "I was doing my job. What could I have done that I won a prize?"