EAST HAVEN - U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was walking down a driveway and listening intently to a homeowner about the shoreline devastation here when she suddenly looked up to see a beach house that had been pulverized into a large pile of rubble.
"Oh, my God!'' Pelosi said as she got her first glimpse of the home on storm-ravaged Cosey Beach Avenue.
She immediately asked the tour guide at that moment - John Dobbins - if it was his house. No, he answered. It was his neighbor's.
The Dobbins home, though, suffered huge damage as its front section was torn off by the massive waves of Tropical Storm Irene that tore through the East Haven waterfront and generated the most extensive damage along the Connecticut shoreline.
Dobbins, who have lived in the home since 1978, said he had survived through many storms - including Hurricane Gloria in 1985 - and never saw damage anywhere close to the devastation of Irene.
Even though FEMA, the federal agency that oversees disasters, is operating a trailer just down the street on Cosey Beach Avenue, Dobbins said that officials had not yet been to his home. He told Pelosi, East Haven Mayor April Capone, and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro that he did not expect any quick resolutions on repairs to his home.
"You basically wind up with eminent domain by regulation,'' Dobbins said as he stood in front of his heavily damaged house.
Capone quickly responded. "The town doesn't want to own this,'' she said.
Dobbins opened up a folder to show Pelosi what his home looked like before the storm - a pristine, waterfront cottage that was well kept and had no damage. Pelosi noted that DeLauro had brought pictures down to Washington and had shown them to the House Democratic caucus to demonstrate the depth of the devastation in Connecticut.
"It just took your breath away,'' Pelosi told Dobbins as reporters listened nearby. "Those pictures are worth a million words.''
After Pelosi walked away, Dobbins expressed surprise that the former U.S. Speaker of the House - a nationally known figure from San Francisco - had come to the small town of East Haven along Long Island Sound.
"I'm shocked,'' he said.
Dobbins, who is retired and lives part-time in East Haven, said, "I need FEMA to make a decision on whether the house is fixable. We need maybe a community seawall to stop the oncoming big waves.''
He was standing directly on the waterfront - with nothing in between his house and and very calm Sound just a few feet away.