One year after Hurricane Sandy ravaged New York City, the Health and Hospitals Corp. is still repairing the damage to the city’s hospital system and estimates that over $800 million will be needed to fully recover from the impact of the storm.

Bellevue Hospital, Coney Island Hospital, Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility, and Metropolitan Hospital Center were the most badly damaged, according to Director of Media Relations Ian Michaels.

Hurricane Sandy caused a water surge that sent millions of gallons of water into hospital basements, where crucial power generators were stored. Much of the reconstruction has focused on installing temporary flood barriers around the hospitals and raising important electrical equipment above harm’s way. “It would be silly to just relocate new equipment back in the basement in the same place where it was vulnerable before,” Michaels said in a telephone interview.

Another complication of the storm was difficulty in keeping track of patient transfers as hospitals were forced to evacuate. In June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the New York State Evacuation of Facilities in Disasters System, or e-FINDS. The city is taking part in the program, which will use barcode wristbands and an online database to quickly locate patients that have been moved to alternate locations.

The Health and Hospitals Corp. is also following a report by the  city Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency that made several suggestions for safeguarding city hospitals, including new elevation requirements in construction codes and flood-proofing basements. The report’s strategy aims to “ensure critical providers’ operability through redundancy and the prevention of physical damage.” Essentially, the city is hoping that having backups for backups will reduce the incidence of total equipment failure during another storm.

In keeping with the report, the city hospital agency has also focused on long-term planning. “The biggest lesson is we need prepare not just for another Superstorm Sandy but for a storm of greater force and magnitude,”   HHC President Alan Aviles said in an interview with ABC.

Plans include permanent floodwalls for Bellevue and Coney Island hospitals, as well as a new structure in the Coney Island parking lot to house electrical equipment and critical hospital wards. According the Michaels, the facility could cost over $300 million, so the city is applying for federal funding under section 406 of the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. This provides hazard mitigation funding for future storms and requires a cost-effectiveness analysis, which the city is doing.

Michaels stressed the importance of receiving this funding. “Long term these facilities are still vulnerable,” he said. “Were Sandy to recur tomorrow, Coney Island Hospital very likely would be flooded once again.”

Graphic: New York City  Health and Hospitals Corp.

It has been eight months since Hurricane Sandy hurdled through the Rockaway peninsula, leaving many people in the area picking up the pieces of their beloved community; particularly store owners. Rogoff’s Cards and Gifts, located on the main strip of Rockaway Beach’s 116^th street, is slowly overcoming the inevitable doom that some stores in the areas have faced as they closed their doors permanently.

Rogoff’s, a local cards and gifts store, has been selling everything from the bare essentials of batteries to special occasion gifts since 1937. Current owner, Peter Patel, who bought the establishment in 1997 from the original owners, explains that he was at his Jersey residence when the storm had rocked his store, leaving over $100,000.00 in damages and a loss of %75 of merchandise.

“When we came back, it was destroyed. We put sandbags down, but it didn’t help,” says Patel. “The basement was full of water and the main floor was flooded out. The water on the main floor was gone when we came back but the water marks were about 4 feet on the main floor.”

Patel, like many of the other store owners in the area, had basic insurance, such as fire and wind, which did not cover all of the expenses of rebuilding after the storm and with little to no help from government agencies, it is taking longer than anticipated for the store to get back to its pre-storm status which he estimates to be another three to four months.

“It was a long wait, after the storm. What wait though? There was no help. Help from whom?” asks a frustrated Patel, who had explained that his store had also recently experienced a small fire after the storm, which added to his predicament. “Store owners helped each other. We all had to help each other. I pumped out my own basement. I did the cleanup by myself, there was no monitory help, nothing; not from FEMA, SBA, City, State, nothing,”

With summer approaching, Patel is also facing the reality of the threat on businesses being posed by the suspended train services, which has still yet to be restored, and the closed beaches; the trains, usually carrying waves of people each summer to the beaches in Rockaway are one of the few most practical ways to get into the area. The combination of these two factors will cause an indefinite revenue loss for all local businesses that rely on the summer shoppers.

“The state needs to do more for Rockaways. The need to help rebuild, have grants, they need to help get the homeless people off the street. They are bringing the neighborhood down and affecting the businesses,” says Patel.

With plans to revamp the boardwalk to resemble Jersey Shore being proposed by the city and state still up in the air, none of the storeowners and locals is sure what to expect this upcoming season.

“That’s a terrible idea. If they do that than those stores that are only going to be opened a couple of months out of the year will be taking valuable costumers away from the small business owners in the area. It will hurt the community,” explains local resident Mary McKinley

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, residents hope to see the rebirth of Rogoff’s emerge as they begin to plan their grand reopening set for some time in July. It would be the first time that they have been opened since Hurricane Sandy unleashed her wrath on the iconic storefront.

“The main goal we want to reach besides reopening is to get the store back to the point where we can make business and offer a good reliable store for the community that has supported us from the very beginning,” says Patel.

The waters of Hurricane Sandy long ago receded and the debris is mostly cleaned up, but many people continue to suffer from related health problems months later.

“We know that in the short term, people have had trouble breathing,” Michael Seilback, the vice-president of public policy and communications at the American Lung Association, said.  “The ‘Sandy cough,’ as it was known, led people to have trouble breathing when outside.”

Demolition, debris handling, truck traffic and vehicle emissions related to the cleanup and rebuilding have all contributed to air pollution. Temporary living conditions were unhealthy in some cases. And mold that infested flood-damaged buildings has posed a hazard to many people.

Temporary shelters for those displaced from the storm contributed to respiratory infections due to the prolonged limited space living arrangement.  Close quarters, without access to a shower, will cause infections or a cold to develop and spread among people who stay within the small space for even a short period of time, Seilback said.

“At the time of the flood, during the acute phase, people were exposed to mold,” said Dr. Hylton Lightman, a pediatric asthma and allergy specialist of Total Family Care Clinic in Far Rockaway.  “There was a surge of bronchospasm and wheezing.”

Sewage and debris can cause toxic fumes which people inhale, Lightman explained.  “The mold is usually hidden in the sheet rock and then it decays causing toxic fumes,” said Lightman, whose clinic was destroyed by the storm but quickly rebuilt.  “Homeowners should therefore move out or get demolition started.”

After the storm, there was much debris to be disposed of in order to start the rebuilding process.  To clear the debris, New York State issued a letter stating that it would allow open burning to occur, although this practice is normally illegal, as long as it does not affect the air quality.  Under the conditions of the variance, the burning was to start in December and last until mid-April.

In November, environmental and public health groups joined together in calling Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reject the plan which would allow the burning of wood and other debris from Hurricane Sandy. “Wood smoke alone contains 26 pollutants specified by the Clean Air Act as hazardous,” the groups said in a statement the American Lung Association issued.  “The gases that are produced can irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory tract, impair lung function and affect vital organs.”

“Open burning is a bad idea,” Laura Haight, the senior environmental associate of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said.  “It causes a lot of health issues such as lung problems.”

Environmental challenges multiplied in the days after the storm.  After the water recedes and everything begins to dry, moisture is left over and it mixes with bacteria forming mold, Seilback said.  Mold was a big problem in many areas the storm flooded.   Seilback said that if the mold is not remediated, lung problems arise, and if people chose to not rebuild or clean up right away, the prolonged exposure to pollutants such as mold or dust would worsen their health.

“A lot of people suffered from pneumonia and were coming into the emergency department, as well as the out-patient clinic, complaining of asthma,” said Penelope Chin, the director of public relations at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital.  “There was a 16 percent increase of overall in-patient and out-patient admission related to respiratory problems.”

Once the State Department of Environmental Conservation passed a variance allowing the burning of debris, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers hired a contractor to begin the burning, which the Army Corps supervised.

The DEC then installed two “air curtain burners” in Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, where the burning took place. The burners were designed to trap fine particles and prevent them from being released in the air.  In the air monitoring report released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, particle pollution exceeded normal limits on four different occasions between Jan. 9 and Feb. 5.  Numbers that exceeded the normal of 35 micrograms per meter squared during 24-hour surveillance periods were highlighted in red.

“The state wrote a letter saying that they would stop the burning if they found that it affected the air quality,” Haight said.  As a result of the repeated problems of smoke and high levels of air pollution, New York City decided to suspend the burning of the debris that remained after Sandy in February, two months earlier than they had originally planned.

Barbara Warren, the executive director of the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, said she believes that Hurricane Sandy was an event that the state has been waiting for. “It was an excuse to build an incinerator,” Warren said.  “It costs so much to export garbage, but burning it is one-fourth to one-fifth of the cost.”

Although the hurricane may have opened a portal for the city to erect an incinerator, this is not the first time it has tried to do so.  The Brooklyn Navy Yard was supposed to be the home of a trash incinerator in the early 1990s but neighbors of the area as well as environmental groups came together to slow down the process and eventually help kill the project from ever entering into the city’s solid waste management plan.

“The main concerns were the emissions,” Warren said speaking about the Floyd Bennett incinerators.  “The city promised that they were only going to burn clean wood, but that’s impossible.”

One major concern of the burning was the release of dioxin in the air.  Dioxin is a highly toxic compound that degrades in the environment once it is released.  Even a small quantity of dioxin is toxic.  “It’s an expensive test and there is no way the city will spend so much to test for this,” Warren said.

The two air curtain burners at Floyd Bennett Field were supposed to recapture and incinerate particles the burning releases.

“The air curtain burners use controlled burning technology so that emissions were minimized,” said Emily DeSantis, the director of public information of the DEC.  “Some emissions might have occurred since it is impossible to attain 100 percent control.  The ash that was derived from the burn has been shipped offsite for landfill disposal,” she said.  “[Only] one of [the air curtain burners] has been removed from the location and the other one will be removed soon.”

Seilback said that cold weather can trigger asthma in asthma patients. But, he said, if the storm occurred during the summer months, the air quality would have been worse because it would have formed ozone.  “For ozone to form there must be heat,” Seilback said.

If there were another storm, people with a pre-existing condition of a respiratory illness would likely develop a chronic cough, Lightman said.  “The pre-disposition will exacerbate the long-term effects,” he said.  “It will most likely be similar to 9/11.”

If there were no other alternatives to the burning, the environmental groups said, they would not have raised attention to government officials about the harm being done to the air quality.  But Haight says that the wood could have been recycled and used as a stabilizer for fuel disposal, and that there is currently a “strong market for wood chips which can be used for garden mulch.”

The American Lung Association’s Air Quality Report of 2013 covers the air quality between 2009 and 2011.

“It will be sometime to see if Hurricane Sandy will have a lasting impact,” Seilback said.

For now, only the short-term effects can be determined.

Photo: Volunteers in Long Beach remove soggy debris to avert mold. (George Armstrong/FEMA)

The director of the city’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations told the City Council on Tuesday that $750 million will be spent to help those still displaced by Hurricane Sandy.

Funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has permitted the city  to come up with a variety of programs that would help homeowners repair and rebuild their homes, said Brad Gair, director of the city recovery agency. The programs will prioritize from the most severely damaged homes and highest level of need to public housing and homes that were moderately affected.

The programs will be broken down into three major categories. An estimated $350 million will go to the most severely damaged one- and two-family homes, $250 million to multi-family homes, and $120 million to public housing that was critically hit during the storm.

Gair, who has over 20 years of experience of emergency management experience around the globe, served as the federal recovery officer following  9/11. He also spoke about what has already been done to help families were displaced by  Hurricane Sandy. The mission of the HRO is to return as many of the more than 2,000 displaced New York City residents to permanent and stable homes as quickly as possible.

The agency has worked closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose officials  did not attend the Council meeting, to help 64,000 households in New York City.

Together they have taken families who were staying in shelters and on gym floors to temporary hotels. The Rapid Repairs program has repaired electric, heat and hot water systems for 9,561 families who have stayed in their own damaged homes for shelter. The city agency worked with the Rent Stabilization Association and set up a housing portal to help displaced families find temporary apartments. More information about housing is available at www.nyc.gov/hpd.

A big concern to many is the health dangers of mold that is spreading rapidly throughout homes flooded during the hurricane. The housing recovery office, working with  FEMA, The Robin Hood Foundation, and the Red Cross, has distributed information on safe mold treatment practice training. Thousands of free kits have been distributed to homes. Mold treatments have been done at no cost to homeowners through the Local Initiatives Support Corp.

The Department of Buildings has posted a guide to rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy on its website, and gives homeowners reconstruction guidance based on FEMA’s new advisory flood elevation maps and the city’s regulatory changes.

“Every recovery is a failure to some extent because what many people whose lives have been affected by disaster really want is to have things back to the way they were, and that no one can give them,” Gair said.  “Sandy has brought devastation, tragedy, and sorrow to New York, but has also given us an opportunity to re-envision our shore communities to build back stronger and more resilient.”

Photo: Brad Gair, left. Courtesy NYC.gov.

Seeking to avoid the hazards and construction site deaths New Orleans suffered after Hurricane Katrina, Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn proposed  legislation Wednesday aimed at protecting  homeowners who wish to elevate their homes in the aftermath of Sandy.

“It’s our job in government to protect homeowners seeking to better protect their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,” Quinn said, according  to a news release.

Quinn, who is running for mayor,  said that the City Council wants to take  precautions in advance so that home elevations undertaken as part of the recovery can proceed safely.

Quinn said  several council members took a trip to New Orleans in January, where they spoke to individuals who helped rebuild after Katrina. There, they were told repeatedly that safeguards needed to be put into place before elevating homes. In Louisiana, home elevation projects have  led to shoddy work and fatal accidents.

Council spokesman Justin Goodman said that home elevations have never been done on such a large scale. The council wants to make sure homes are elevated safely and professionally.

“It’s all a pre-emptive attempt to increase safety for everyone, and get the job done correctly,”  Goodman said. “We must make sure it’s all done in the right way.”

Eden Goykadosh, 21, of Great Neck, which was hit hard by Sandy, said she admires the fact that the city is seeking  to ensure that homes are properly elevated.

“Most homeowners are relatively uninformed regarding safety procedures of elevating homes, as demonstrated by the fact that when they have tried elevating the homes in the past, destruction resulted,” Goykadosh said.

Goykadosh said she believes this issue is a matter of  public safety.

Officials said  there are four components to the proposed  legislation. It requires that construction plans clarify if elevation will be part of a specific project, and that an approved special inspector oversees work. Contractors also must give 48 hours notice prior to elevating, so the Buildings Department can supervise their work.

In addition, the legislation calls for the city Department of Consumer Affairs to offer instruction to the public concerning the kinds of work home improvement contractors can do, and the licenses contractors need to complete each type of work.

“This new legislation will result in both safer homes and construction sites for New Yorkers,” said Quinn.

Photo: Council member James Oddo shows photo of building elevated in New Orleans. NYC Council.

“Most of my friends stayed. I don’t think I can name one who evacuated,” Samantha Grillo, Breezy Point, Queens

“We paid no attention. We went about our daily business. And that was our downfall,” Anthony Lyrixs Ricketts, Far Rockaway, Queens

“The damage is the damage but we had to go through that whole trauma that could have been avoided,” Janet DiGeronimo, Bergen Beach, Brooklyn

These are the voices of three New Yorkers who stayed behind in their homes during one of the most damaging storms, bringing disaster and chaos to this region. Hurricane Sandy’s high surges and strong winds blew up to 90mph at the end of October.

When Hurricane Irene touched down last year approximately 9,200 people followed the mandatory evacuation warning issued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the summer of 2011.

This time, Mayor Bloomberg ordered an evacuation of all 270,000 residents in Evacuation Zone A, which encompassed Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, the Rockaways and coastal areas of Staten Island, among other neighborhoods. As Sandy approached, only 6,100 people left their homes to seek shelter from the devastating storm.

There are many reasons why people decide not to leave when such an incredible force of nature approaches. Some choose to stay out of the fear of looting, or if they don’t have anywhere to go. Others are afraid of shelters and not knowing what to expect there. Others might be physically unable to evacuate their homes, whether they live in high-rise apartment buildings or single-family houses. Pet owners might have been worried about not being able to take their animals along. Others, who had evacuated for Irene and nothing happened to their property, opted for waiting out Hurricane Sandy.

Janet DiGeronimo, a Brooklyn College student, lived in Bergen Beach for a little than over a year. She shared a house together with her parents, her younger brother, her grandmother and a dog. The family lived on the first floor of the house, which was still under construction. Bergen Beach was not ordered to evacuate, since it was in Evacuation Zone B.

When she recalled the night as Sandy touched down, DiGeronimo compared the beginning moments with her experience from Hurricane Irene. It started similarly. The water came in at the front door, right next to her room. The family hectically started to put down towels and blankets. Her father left work early on Monday after his family called him and told him they would have to start pumping out the water.

“There was a moment when we all looked at each other and realized we need to leave,” remembered DiGeronimo.  She and her family members all carried the same look on their faces because it had dawned on them that the situation in the house would soon be too dangerous for them to stay. 

They decided to evacuate to their aunt’s house in Bensonhurst. But the storm would not let them.

DiGeronimo remembers the strong winds that also managed to knock down the fence in their backyard, which forced them to have to crawl out underneath it. When they reached the front of the house, she was shocked because “the water was up to my knees,” she said.  “It was so weird because the backyard was dry. This whole time we didn’t realize it was that bad.”

The family got into the car and they noticed that all other cars on the street were trying to do the same. They went down the road and then the water started coming at them.

“At that point the water in the car reached up to my chest,” she said. The water pressure from outside made it difficult to escape the car. When they finally struggled their way out of the vehicle, her picked up the dog and they started making their way back to the house. 

In pitch black darkness, the family waded through the chest-high water. They saw trees down and electric wires catching fire. A woman they have never met before spotted them from her attic and let them stay in her house until the early morning hours when her uncle picked them up and brought them to his house in Bensonhurst.

Looking back, DiGeronimo recalled that up to the last minutes before her house lost power the family had been watching the news and heard nothing about their neighborhood being in severe danger. “Especially since we are close to the water. It’s angering,” she said. On top of that, after they contacted FEMA they got to know that their claim is going to be denied after the first round of inspections.

The DiGeronimo family lived in Zone B, which did not have mandatory evacuation. Residents in areas like Bergen Beach, parts of Sheepshead Bay, Gerritsen Beach and Canarsie, all which experienced major flooding, were not ordered to leave their homes. Zone B is described as an area that might see potential flooding from a Category 2+ hurricane.

According to the New York City Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan about 670,000 people live in Zone B. Hurricane Sandy turned out to indeed be a category 1 storm but its eyewall, the area within the storm where most rainfall occurs with wind speeds up to 150mph, was that of a category 3 hurricane. This posed higher threats for even higher lying areas of New York City.

The fact is, the flood maps used today indicating zones prone to flooding were drawn in 1983 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), long before people worried about global warming. Post-Sandy there has been much talk about revising the flood maps.

Other New Yorkers, like 

the Ricketts in Zone A decided not to evacuate this time since not much happened to their property during Hurricane Irene.

The Ricketts family, who live in Far Rockaway, consists of his father Anthony, a math professor at York College, his mother Sarah, Lyrixs and his little sister Shawna. They shared a two-story apartment house and had been living in the Rockaways for the past 8 years.

“When we got the news [about Hurricane Sandy] we didn’t pay no mind because of last year, Irene,” said Ricketts. “It wasn’t serious at all.” 

Then the family evacuated their house only to find that the storm didn’t do they expected damage. So they decided to ride this storm out.

“But we should have taken Bloomberg’s warning seriously. We stayed and we sure got the full experience of Sandy,” said Ricketts. He described the moments before the storm touched down in a nervous, but thoughtful tone. He and his sister stayed on the first floor of their house. He was on his phone texting with friends, watching TV and following the news on Hurricane Sandy. 

He didn’t think much would happen until the water started to rise up from the basement of their house.

“The real terror happened when our carpet began to get wet,” he said. The siblings first went outside but couldn’t get far as the water had already risen so high that the family’s car was submerged.

“So we went to the higher floor to my parents, shut the door and prayed. I was scared. I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Ricketts said.

While they are rebuilding after the storm, “my mother and father told us that once it’s rebuilt, they’re going to sell it,” said Ricketts “My mom doesn’t want to go through that experience again. And we’re going to move out of the Rockaways.”

Samantha Grillo, also a Brooklyn College student has a similar story. Her father had decided to ride the storm out in their house in Breezy Point, together with their dog. While he let his wife and two kids leave and evacuate to relatives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Victor Grillo was prepared for the storm to come and leave, just like Irene did in 2011.

But this year’s hurricane would prove a different experience for the retired police officer. 

During the day his daughter hadn’t talked too much with her father but around 8 o’clock on Monday night when the storm made landfall in New York City, she got worried and reached out to him on his cell phone.

“When I called him the first thing he said was ‘I shouldn’t have stayed, I made a mistake,’’’ Grillo said. She was shocked after hearing her father’s serious words and handed the phone over to her mother who had started crying over fear for her husband’s life. He told his family that he had to flee from the first floor to the attic in order to escape from the water surges coming into the house. The water rushed into the house too fast to save anything.

Meanwhile Grillo tried to call their neighbors in Breezy Point to go and check on her dad without success. Almost all of her friends experienced severe flooding in their homes as well. One of them advised Grillo that she should tell her father to cut a hole into the roof in case he got trapped in the attic with water still continuing to rise. 

She called a friend who worked in the local volunteer fire department, to see if someone could check on her father. When she finally reached someone she was assured that her dad would be checked on as soon as the water receded.

Then Grillo saw the reports of the fire that had broken out in her old neighborhood. She logged onto the social media site Facebook to see how her friends were faring through this storm and also got in contact with an old high school friend who she heard lost her house during the devastating fire that destroyed 111 homes in Breezy Point, a story that dictated much of the news cycle the day after the storm had hit.

“At that point I was terrified. My neighborhood was in chaos,” she said. A few hours later Samantha got a phone call from her father telling him he would go to sleep, since the worst of the phone was over. They are currently rebuilding.

The days after the storm showed the path of destruction the hurricane left behind in a city that realized how vulnerable it had became in the face of a natural disaster like that. The storm brought up a lot of questions for city planners, in terms of emergency preparedness and for residents in lower lying areas whether they want to keep living there in a future now uncertain.

It is human nature to try to stand up when we are threatened, though many times when faced with natural disasters, people are overwhelmed. Superstorm Sandy smashed Staten Island hard. The peak storm tides reached 16 feet. Sandy’s wrath caused 41 New Yorkers to lose their lives, 22 from Staten Island.

While some of those residents listened to warnings to evacuate, others stayed behind. Hope was lost when many people lost everything they had, falling to Mother Nature’s fate. While the residents of Staten Island waited for relief from the Red Cross and FEMA, it was the youth that rose above the devastation to help those in need in an attempt to rekindle the fires of the Staten Island spirit.

“You face us with something like this and we’re going to kick it in the ass,” said Staten Island resident Gina Kohm.

Kohm, 24, is just one example of the leadership roles the youth on Staten Island have taken on to fight back. Starting from the day after the storm, she has organized deliveries of relief items such as food, clothing and hygiene products at 192 Ebbitts Street in the New Dorp neighborhood of Staten Island.  The distribution center is owned by Arianna Grand and was purchased three weeks prior to the storm as a catering hall. Now it is a place where residents come to seek heat, food and supplies as mountains of clothes, many brand new with tags that are piled high along with items are placed neatly in a supermarket fashion.

New Dorp Beach was one of the areas hit the hardest during the storm. roshe run flywire Residents and volunteers walked around the neighborhood that resembled a ghost town with masks to protect them from health risks. Some of the volunteers including Kohm suffered from coughs, but that didn’t stop them from giving up their time—and their health–for those who desperately were seeking aid. Houses were found on a tilt, in a fashion that Kohm describes are being a scene from the “Wizard of Oz”, where others are just completely destroyed.

“This is something that you see on the commercials while Sarah McLachlan is playing that sad music and she wants you to donate $20 for the month. This is something you see in a third world country when you see the babies climbing over the mountains of dirt. This is like not something you would ever see or expect to see here especially here in Staten Island,” Kohm stated.

“I was raised with everything and anything. And that’s how Staten Island is–everyone is always competing to have bigger and better things. But in seconds, the water literally went from inches to feet. In seconds, your life can be washed away,” said Kohm.

Even though her family home was personally unaffected by the storm, on a borough like Staten Island, everyone knows everyone, causing every resident to know at least someone who was affected in a life shatteringly way. Consequentially, she couldn’t just sit back at watch.

“It doesn’t hit a race, or a gender – it’s everyone and it’s home. It’s not a house that’s washed away, it’s homes. You’re displacing people from homes. It’s not something you can stop like a terrorist attack, it’s not something you can fight off,” she said.

Kohm, who works for Arianna Grand, but has been a vital volunteer, arrives at 192 Ebbitts Street around 9:30 a.m. and stays until refugees stop coming in. The distribution center has no set closing time–their philosophy is to help anyone who needs it not matter what time it is. She receives daily shipments from all over the country including gas sent from West Philadelphia.

Kohm stated how her life has drastically changed. She wakes up every morning with her mind racing, thinking about how she has to open to distribution center and constantly runs through the list of everything she needs to get done. “Your normal day of the things that you thought mattered doesn’t matter. It’s just so amazing how this can change people’s lives.”

Kohm has made a huge impact on the residents of New Dorp. With her help residents in the area, including those on Navesink Place received the items they needed the weather the aftermath. “I will keep these people for the rest of my life,” said 52-year-old Navesink Place resident Victoria Kostyuka.

While volunteers helped Kostyuka clean up her damaged house where she lives alone with her cats, she spoke about how Kohm was her lifeline, as she was the only source to allow her to charge her phone immediately after storm. Kohm was also able to get Kostyuka a generator that was shared with her neighbors who live with a sick family member that couldn’t evacuate.

“Gina is doing everything for the entire community,” Kostyuka said with tears in her eyes as she recalled experiencing the devastation caused to her house and car. With no means to get around and seek help, Kohm assured she would have everything she needed and the manpower to help with the cleanup.

“I’m going 100 miles per hour,” said Kohm.

But Kohm isn’t the only key player in the young community. Michael Maugeri, 26, has also stepped up to the plate during a time when many believe that the Red Cross was striking out. As a former lifeguard, he acted as a first responder near roshe run flywire femmes the Staten Island Mall. But after receiving calls about the help needed in New Dorp, he jumped at the opportunity to assist in relief efforts by rescuing people out of their houses, helping in clean up and bringing supplies.

“The following day when I went down [to New Dorp] after the storm and people were starting their clean up, the people who were hit the worse were the nicest people ever. They had smiles on their face, they were making jokes as they were throwing shingles around, so that the uplifting part of it,” said Maugeri. He continued, “I can’t believe these people are still happy to have their lives.”

Maugeri organized a toy drive in memory of Brendan, 2, and Connor, 4, Moore who tragically lost their lives during the storm. “I realized there was nothing for kids. There was a Red Cross truck down at the bottom of New Dorp and I saw this little kid and he got a cup of apple juice and the guys said, ‘Do you want some Oreos with that?’ He was so excited over these Oreos. I wish I had something to give him, so I organized a toy drive,” stated Maugeri.

With the help of HelpStatenIsland.com, Maugeri received phone calls from Pennsylvania, New York City and Long Island asking where they can bring toys. “My mind is going a million miles a minute, but I know I have a strong team behind me,” said Maugeri before the drive.

Maugeri received over 500 responses from people wanting to donate, resulting in an excess of toys. Maugeri made arrangements with Operation Sandy Claus so that the remaining toys will be given to children in need during the holidays. “People are definitely noticing, but it’s more on the local level,” he said about spreading awareness of his cause.

On Sunday, November 11, a crew consisting predominately of young adults gathered together to collection donated toys that were than distributed to New Dorp. Maugeri, an actor, is also involved with planning a fundraiser for the victims of Sandy at the St. George Theater called Steve Standuls Presents Staten Island Stands Together.

But while the youth of Staten Island have been lights of hope for those in need, the Red Cross and FEMA have been criticized for the immediate work that was not provided.

A week after the storm, Maugeri stated, “I think even in the midst of all this, we are still not getting the attention we need. It’s the relief efforts are coming from our own people, from Staten Islanders our victims themselves, rather than the Red Cross or FEMA we haven’t seen. I’ve seen one Red Cross truck this whole time.”

According Red Cross Communications Officer Michael de Vulpillieres, to date the Red Cross has distributed more than 300,000 relief items to the residents of Staten Island that include: flashlights, blankets, clean-up supplies, hygiene items and batteries. They have provided nearly 400,000 meals and snacks to Staten Island residents. Right now, more than 20 Red Cross vehicles are distributing relief items and food to Staten Island residents and have focused on neighborhoods that include: Midland Beach, New Dorp Beach, Oakwood Beach, Tottenville, Great Kills, West Brighton, and Cedar Grove Beach.

Although smaller scale relief efforts from the Red Cross began immediately after the storm, de Vulpillieres stated that the larger scale efforts began on November 1^st. This included Red Cross volunteers, as the Red Cross is made up of 90 percent volunteers, and other New Yorkers going door to door with relief packages for those who couldn’t mobilize to the main distribution centers.  The Red Cross has raised more than $150 million and spent nearly $70 million on to provide food and other needed supplies.

“We understand that there were frustrations early on. There were some communities that were frustrated because they had a hard time accessing our supplies, but as the days have gone by, were able to bring in more supplies,” de Vulpillieres stated.

He said that the Red Cross has worked with those volunteering outside the Red Cross as well including those associated with government and non-government organizations to help service as many people as they could. “No organization can respond by themselves, roshe run hyp particularly to this type of disaster.”

Like many of the volunteers, Kohm said she has been assisting in relief efforts “because the government at first did not give us the help we needed right away.” She did note that FEMA and the Red Cross have been assisting in New Dorp. “They are out there and trying to help, but it’s going to take time and it’s not going to happen overnight.”  However, initially, it was the local communities who really made an impact. “Did the government give enough help? No. If we weren’t here, would the people have the supplies that have? Absolutely not. ”

“I’ve heard that FEMA is doing good from the news and then I heard personally that FEMA is doing horrible,” said Maugeri. A representative from FEMA could not be reached at this time.

But with 1500 youth volunteers in the New York City Red Cross, the organization has seen one third of them stepping forward to help after the storm. “The Red Cross has a tradition in engaging the youth,” stated de Vulpillieres. He emphasized that he has seen strong motivation from the youth volunteers, as they have been helpful in the distribution efforts, as well as raising money and spreading the word via social media.

As much as young people have become leaders in the relief work, the communities as a whole have worked together. “I was down in New Dorp Beach and the damage was tremendous. And we saw the local community really come out to support the operation,” said de Vulpillieres. “What blew me away is the outpouring of help from the community. So many people want to help. It’s just wonderful to see,” he added.

“Staten Islanders are really the ones who are pulling together,” declared Kohm.

Although the efforts from the Red Cross have been criticized, they continue to help until Staten Island is back on its feet. “We’re not leaving Staten Island. We are going to be here for the long haul. We are still in that initial phase and we’re not leaving anytime soon,” stated de Vulpillieres.

Maugeri summed up the spirit on the island perfectly. “Everyone is Staten Island proud because we definitely gotten together and we’ve definitely hold our own.”

Nearly two months after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the waterfront neighborhood of Babylon Village, much of the area has recovered.  But the employees of one destroyed catering hall are still suffering in the aftermath.

The Venetian Yacht Club, which sits along the dock of the Great South Bay, was washed into the water, along with the jobs of most of those employed in the building.

The staff has been sent to sister locations, Terrance on the Park in Queens and Crestwood Manor in Northport.  But each is miles away.  The shifts are few and far between, and the working conditions have changed.

“I went from bartending at a fancy catering hall to fumbling around in a place that consistently bounces checks while offering an inconsistent work flow,” said former bartender Christopher Sweet.

“Employees have been fighting for shifts now that they are hard to come by,” said a worker who asked to be anonymous. “Many employees have been let go because management can no longer afford their salaries.”

Among those who lost their jobs in the wake of the storm are the company’s head chef and maître’d.

The new reality has stoked hostilities amongst employees, and animosity toward management.  Nearly ten members of the wait staff have been fired for reasons such as Facebook posts deriding Venetian Yacht Club management to simply requesting time off.

Other employees have either left on their own, free run 5.0 femmes finding employment elsewhere.  More are claiming unemployment benefits due to the storm.

“The place is on lockdown,” an anonymous employee explained, “they’re so ready to fire anyone over anything because they can’t afford to keep us.”

The Venetian Yacht Club is situated atop the Great South Bay — beautiful for summertime weddings, but vulnerable to the evils of Mother Nature.

“The night before the storm when we were leaving work,” former supervisor Turhan Kara recalled, “The water was already knee deep, and the surge hadn’t even happened yet.”

As for the damage that caused the employee bitterness: sea walls collapsed, wrecking the once-picturesque outdoor patio. Floodwater reached the basement ceiling, drowning sales offices, inventory, and a prep kitchen. According to General Manager, Toni Ann Dillon, the damages are estimated at five million dollars.  The only aid offered by FEMA is a long-term loan.

The Venetian plans to open its doors in January. “Many of the weddings are either moved to Terrace on the Park or Crestwood Manor,” Dillon explained, “Some have cancelled, others postponed.”

Dillon chose not to comment on the release and treatment of employees. Owners George and Tom Makkos were unavailable for comment.

Despite the recent stresses stirred by the natural disaster, “The Venetian,” as it is commonly known, still maintains its place in the Babylon Village community.

“I have seen a lot of people come together in an effort to restore the Venetian quickly,” Cunningham concluded, “and that is very refreshing to see during these hard times.”

Photo by Scott P. Moore/Babylon Village Patch

When Hurricane Sandy tore through sections of the northeast on the night of October 29^th, few were prepared for the triple whammy of the unusual weather systems that caused Sandy to veer towards shore, the high tide, and the full moon all combining to create huge surges of waters that flooded and devastated neighborhoods all along the shoreline from New Jersey to New York and Staten Island.

Neighborhoods like Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Breezy Point, the Rockaways and other hard hit areas were evacuated and the first to receive government help because they were designated as zone A, which was a mandatory evacuation zone in the event of an approaching Level 1 hurricane like Sandy.

At the same time, Gerritsen Beach, which is a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides and divided by a canal, in the Southeast section of Brooklyn, was not ordered to evacuate because they were designated as Zone B.  This meant that in the event of mass flooding like that experienced by residents in Zone A, Gerritsen Beach was basically on their own.  In spite of this, the small community of about 5,200 residents banded together and provided a model of how people have used their community ties to work together to help themselves survive  Sandy’s devastating blow.

“They lost everything they had,” said Barbarann Harper, a long-time resident of Gerritsen Beach.  “They lost their cars and nobody ever thought that this would come up as far as it did.”  Harper pointed to her boots, legs, and chest to show where the water rose on her body all within minutes.  She told a harrowing tale of rescue as she and her husband spent three hours in the chest high water scrambling to evacuate elderly residents from their flooded homes in neighborhood owned kayaks and small boats.

A little over a week after Hurricane Sandy hit, Harper and other long-standing volunteers from the Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department, affectionately known as “Vollies,” stood in front of  Blue Star Mother’s Hall.  The hall is a relief center that was set up across the street and down the block from the Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department at 52 Seba Avenue.  Both are located on a narrow two-way street with the din of the bustle of constantly moving cars and trucks coming in and out to drop off donations and volunteers.  It’s a noisy street with the sounds of people’s voices, gas-driven generators, running truck engines, and the beep, beep, beep sound of trucks moving in reverse, many of which were from food trucks that came in from all over the neighborhood.  The smell of diesel for the generators and exhaust fumes from the trucks permeated the air.

   
           “We don’t have food, we don’t have power, we didn’t have gas, we didn’t  have no help,” Harper complained as she compared New Dorp, Staten Island, which received a lot of attention and assistance immediately after the disaster,  with Gerritsen Beach, which was ignored and left to survive on their own.  She said that the water came up 15 feet in her home with the flood surge, which was so strong that it brought in a house and a boat from as far as the Rockaways.

A temporary shelter was set up at nearby Resurrection Church with about 15 cots and some water supplied by New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, but relief efforts eventually had to be moved to the hall on Seba Avenue to meet the high demand of the needs of the community.  Another smaller relief center was set up at the Cort Club, located on the corner of Gerritsen Avenue and Devon Avenue for residents in that area.

Several six-foot tables of food, coffee, and supplies were lined up on both sides of the main relief center doors in front of the large blue mural of the Gerritsen Beach Fire Department logo, and a large sign that said “Relief Center.”  An American flag waved proudly above the scene in this patriotic, predominantly Irish and Italian close-knit community where everyone knows everyone else and families have been in the neighborhood for generations.

Inside, the main room was filled halfway to the ceiling with stacks of assorted clothing yet to be sorted and organized.  Along the walls and in little islands were other types of medical, cleaning, and household supplies, as well as areas for dry goods and canned food.

In addition to the Vollies and amid the hustle and bustle, several neighborhood residents and their children were helping to man the tables and give direction to the constant stream of visitors and volunteers coming in.  Firefighters from other companies and police officers from the nearby 61^st precinct were also stopping by to check on community needs and to lend a helping hand.

Acting Chief of the Vollies, Doreen Garson, was the main organizer of relief efforts after Sandy hit. Garson has been in the community for over 30 years.  She has her own realty company under her professional name of Doreen Greenwood and is the president of the Brooklyn Board of Realtors.   According to Garson, Gerritsen Beach is comprised of approximately 1,700 – 1,800 homes and, at the most, up to 6,000 residents.  The first settlers were Norwegians, then the Germans, Irish, and Italians, but more recently some Jewish and Chinese have also increased the diversity of Gerritsen Beach.  She keeps a list of all the people, volunteer groups, restaurants, food trucks and others, who number in the hundreds.   At the peak of need, three to four thousand meals a day were being served for those who could make it to the relief center.  Packaged meals were delivered by the Vollies to those who could not leave their homes.

Janet Behrens, 61, who just had a hip replacement in April and is a World Trade Center survivor from 2001,was able to get a car ride from a friend and came for the first time after a whole week of being trapped in her house on Kay Court.  She said that the relief center was the only place where residents could get a hot meal.   “I was on the 104^th  floor of the second tower when the plane hit, and now this,” Behrens said.  “Right now, I just think my life sucks, I gotta tell you,” she said in a trembling voice.   She said the water missed the top floor of her house by two inches and her seven foot basement was completely flooded.  Behrens voice trailed off as she said, “I had to rip everything out–my hot water heater, my burner…”   And yet, Behrens considered herself fortunate because she still had a living room to sit in and a bed to sleep in on the top floor of her house.  Her sister, who lives just a few blocks away, lost everything and has nowhere to live.

She said that the community was desperately in need of people who could supply help to repair the homes because the people in the neighborhood were lower income people who lived from paycheck to paycheck.  “This neighborhood is devastated and people cannot afford to rebuild,” she said.    “We don’t have $50,000 to $70,000 to move back into our houses and these people have no place to go,” she continued.  Without power and gas, she described how hard it was to even know what was going on or what became of her neighbors.  At night, it would be pitch dark in the streets and people would be fearful to go out and possibly hurt themselves, something they could not afford to do under the circumstances.  The phone service was spotty and she had to worry about running her battery down because it was hard to find or even get to a place to charge her phone.

She described how it took weeks to get attention from FEMA and the frustration of having to go through her home owner’s and flood insurance first, all with very limited abilities to communicate without power or transportation.   Her insurance companies wanted her to save everything, but told Behrens that they couldn’t get to her for another two weeks.  When Behrens told them that she was afraid of having a mold situation since everything that was affected by the flooding would start to rot, she was then told to take pictures of everything over $100 and to get rid of the rest.

Behrens and several residents spoke of the role that Senator Martin S. Golden played in helping the community on a daily basis.  Harper said that Golden was there from day one, wading in chest deep water to help residents escape the flooding water.  Golden, along with Reverend Dennis J. Farrell of the Resurrection Church, also helped expedite arrangements with the city to set up the main relief center.  Later, Golden’s office helped residents get needed repairs through a New York City Rapid Repair Program.

Behrens was voted woman of the year by Senator Golden a few years back for the work she does through the non-profit, Gerritsen Beach Cares, which helps decorate Gerritsen Avenue with flags in April just prior to the Little League Parade and helps string Christmas lights right after Thanksgiving.  Her organization works with other groups in community activities and has taken a central role in the hurricane relief efforts by working with the Cort Club to set up a hurricane relief fund account.

Robert Bauerlein came in from Arizona for a week to help out because he came from the neighborhood and many of his friends needed his help.  He said that there was only minimal coverage by the media and it took a few days for even a little help to arrive.  “The Red Cross was here for, you know, two days tops, handing out sandwiches and giving out water,” said Bauerlein.  Eventually, the national guard came with water, blankets, and MREs after reports about Gerritsen Beach made national news on CNN.

When asked what he thought about what was going to happen to the people there, Bauerlein said that he thought that a lot of people were going to be displaced and that many of the houses would be condemned.  “We still have a lot of people–even though there’s no power, they’re still staying in their homes,” Bauerlein said.  “Even though the bottom floors of their homes were flooded, we still have people living in the second floor of their homes huddled under seven layers of blankets to stay warm,” he continued.   He explained the urgency to get licensed electricians, boiler repair men and tree cutters in first to restore power and get heat into people’s homes.  Since so many electrical panels were damaged by the sea water, electricians would either need to inspect and ok the panel boxes or replace them before the electricity could be turned back on; any kind of short or spark due to a malfunctioning panel box could otherwise lead to a deadly fire.

Several volunteer fire departments from other states also sent support or came in person to help out.  Three fire companies from central Pennsylvania came down for the weekend to supply logistical support and relief by covering fires so that the Vollies could take a break with their families.

According to Behrens, some other neighborhood groups that helped out were the Knights of Columbus, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and St. James Church.  Borough President Marty Markowitz’s office donated $25,000 to help residents with their electrical panels.

Lauren Brenner, who has been with the Vollies for eight years said that the majority of the homes now have power back, but there are still many that don’t  have their boilers yet.  They cost around $6,000 and supplies and boiler technicians are in high demand.  She has helped distribute donated electric heaters as a temporary solution for some.  “It’s a lot better, but it’s not going to be anywhere near normal for at least another couple of weeks,” Brenner said.

By Amanda Rodriguez

Flooding in Brooklyn is not something we see often; however, when Hurricane Sandy stormed New York, she took with her the lives of 109 and the homes of thousands. This tragedy not only showed New York its mortality, but also reminded New Yorkers that there are greater struggles than catching the late bus in the morning.

Many New Yorkers have returned to the regular hustle and bustle that the city is known for. Some parts of the five boroughs didn’t see any affects, but for a few college students, life has not turned back the dial. zx 630 Three college students heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy agreed to share their experiences.

Wearing his organization’s hoodie, Jose “Wreckonize” Batres grabs a seat on the light green SUBO building sofas. After finding what looks like a comfortable position, he smiles.

“Let’s do this, then!”

Hurricane Sandy hit land sometime Monday evening, and while many families had found retreat or safety, not all were so fortunate.

“We were in an evacuation zone, but we couldn’t leave. We had no place to go really, so we figured we’d ride it out,” said Batres as he stares into the noisy game room of SUBO recalling the night.

“It was different. Wind was blowing hard. Trees were getting bent and broken and pieces flying everywhere due to the wind. Heavy rain was pouring hard and the lights went out as well.”

Batres looks around, analyzing his surroundings and asks to move to a more private room. His eyes flash a look of sadness as he reseats himself on a black and white loveseat in the SUBO basement. Rearranging himself several times before speaking again, he glances up and clears his throat lightly. Batres is a Kingsborough Community College student who lives in Rockaway, Queens. His recollection of Superstorm Sandy has movie-like energy.
 CUNY students got some time off because of Sandy, but with the kind of damage done to Batres’ area, returning to school would not be a simple transition.

“The lights went out, one by one, in every building and slowly throughout the whole peninsula. No heat, so we had to sleep with sweaters, sweatpants, and sometimes hats. No hot water, so we had to heat up water on the stove in our biggest pots. And with stores closed due to no electricity, food was hard to come by for some if they weren’t prepared. Waited on lines sometimes for hours just to get food. Mail that was able to come in, and for any type of help, whether it was for clothes, medical attention or shelter. Even transportation, people had to wait for hours just to take public transportation and with no lights public transportation stopped at a certain time due to the traffic signals not working.”

In New York, the CUNY system houses roughly 272,000 students in total. All CUNY colleges are comprised of commuters and while the MTA was up and running about 5 days after, this did not mean that college students who live great distances could just spring back up for school. Professors are not always the most understanding people in the world.

“Most were understanding except for one who gave us a test when we came back to school like anybody’s mind was on that. And still left homework but still had no electricity to even use my computer or light to read or even a phone to use it to look things up. Even just being able to get home has been the biggest hassle and an overhaul of work in a short period of time due to the days missed is also a problem,” Batres says while simultaneously shuffling through a bag full of papers to find syllabi.

The struggle of returning to student life is not one that Batres faces alone. Many students in the metropolitan area have had trouble readjusting to school life. One of these students is the Bergen Beach native Janet DiGeronimo. Walking into the room with a grey sweater and a forced smile on her face, she sits next to Batres and timidly introduces herself.

“Bergen Beach was considered a Zone B. Evacuations weren’t ‘necessary’… It all happened in the blink of an eye. One minute it was windy outside, the next our house was filling up with water. We tried to stop the water from coming in, but we soon realized that it was beyond our control and that we had to leave.”

DiGeronimo begins to fidget whilst remembering the Superstorm’s hit. The storm had taken its toll not only in power outage, but in the belongings it took with it.

“The whole first floor of our home was destroyed. We lost everything from Air Jordan Femme appliances to clothing. The walls and floors had to be ripped out, and everything has to be replaced.”

Students like DiGeronimo have been displaced; lost belongings and some have even lost homes. The idea that school would simply just return so quickly when many have not been able to pick up the pieces is a hard pill to swallow.

“I returned to school the first Monday that campus was open to speak to my professors, but I was not able to attend class regularly until about three weeks after the storm. It’s extremely difficult. It’s hard to focus on work and dedicate time to assignments when so much is going on. Hurricane Sandy has honestly turned my whole world upside down. School has always been very important to me, but lately I find it very hard to concentrate on anything, including my classes.”

Janet was battling between maintaining normalcy in her studies while simultaneously dealing with the loss of her belongings, her home and many memories that washed away with the storm.

“The storm has taken a huge toll on everyone, but we are trying to do the best we can. We know that even though we lost so much and are going through a difficult time, many people have it even worse than us. I’m currently staying at my aunt’s apartment in Bensonhurst.

“As far as school goes, with the exception of one, my professors have been very understanding. They are allowing me to make up the work I missed and have been very sympathetic.”

Later in the day, wearing a pair of green UrbanEars while twirling a Naruto keychain, Khyriel ‘Diverze’ Palmer sits on the couch across my table while awaiting my questions.

“LS, I’m ready whenever you are, kiddo…”

Khyriel is a Coney Island native who had a front row seat for the horrendous event that was Superstorm Sandy.

“ I live in zone A, one block away from the beach. So I guess you can say I had a front row view of Sandy’s debut. My family and I decided to stay because when we evacuated for hurricane Irene, we came back to Coney with no damage done. So we assumed that would be the same case for Hurricane Sandy.”

The reality of what Khyriel and his family would now face was much more than they had planned for. Living on the 23rd floor, they had no power or heat for several days. The entire first floor was flooded during that time, so attempting to leave was futile.
“When Sandy hit, the power in my building was the first to go out. The streetlights reflected the water as it rushed onto the streets. It looked as if the streets were covered in lava. Then, my building started rocking left to right gently. My mother’s car had to go to the scrap yard because of the water damage. Plus, all the food was no good anymore…”

A family of seven living in one home had to go with no food, or electricity until the first floor was pumped out of water and FEMA had come to handle the mess left by the storm.

“I returned to school about a few days after it was open again. It had been stressful at the time because I couldn’t sleep at night. But my friends helped me move on. Most of my professors already knew my situation, so I didn’t have to explain. Honestly, I have me a lot of make up work I’m tryna finish up. FEMA paid for us to start on a hotel for the time being. But luckily we were home before Thanksgiving. Getting back home never felt so good, honestly. Made it seem like we’d be okay from there…”
The hardships of a student are immense enough, without the added stresses of not having a stable home life. In the average student’s life, between working, a heavy course load and outside relationships- maintaining a steady GPA is a difficult task. air jordan 1 After a natural disaster of the likes of this one, students are expected to fall right back into place. For students like Jose Batres, Khyriel Palmer, and Janet DiGeronimo, this may not be as simple as it once was.

For more information on declaring damages done by the storm, CLICK HERE.  For free counseling hotlines, CLICK HERE.
 For information on how you can help Sandy victims, CLICK HERE.
  To donate to the children affected by Hurricane Sandy, CLICK HERE. On the cheerful side of things, READ ABOUT HOW A SECRET SANTA is attempting to brighten some Sandy victims’ days.

Sitting on a black leather chair with her cat lying stretched across the floor by the fireplace, Triciann Botta waits for customers to arrive. But the only people who stop by are other local business owners who have come to check how Botta is doing.

For most businesses in Red Hook, the road to recovery after Hurricane Sandy has been a long one. Mark’s Pizzeria, located a block away from Botta’s wine store, Botta di Vino, was closed for over three weeks and cost owner Tony Kokale an estimated $70,000. Although Botta’s store was flooded, she did not lose any inventory because she moved her wine bottles up high. When the electricity returned on  Nov. 28, Botta began to start selling wine.

Botta di Vino was spared any major damage and only needed to be cleared of flood water and dried. But while the cost of repairs may have been low, the effects on Red Hook continue.

Botta was among those who had to leave. Forced out of her first floor apartment, she and her husband Jeffrey moved into a home in East Hampton. What once was a two-minute walk became a two-hour drive that costs Botta  from $120 to $140 a week in gas.

As people moved out, fewer customers came in.  While Botta was able to sell some wine in the week following Sandy, the effect of the storm on local businesses is only beginning.  The shutdown of the local Fairway Market has reduced business.

“It wasn’t the first week,” said Botta. “It’s now. People are making the decision to leave. The 28,000 people a week that Fairway brought are no longer coming in. I’m going to say the longer it takes Fairway to come back, the longer it takes for us to come back.”

With residents leaving and supermarket shoppers not driving into Red Hook, the number of customers has dropped down significantly in a time when Botta di Vino makes the most money.

“Last week was a big tell,” said Botta. “What we usually do in a day, roshe run hyp femmes we did in a week. The holiday season is kind of a bust now. What we made in November and December would float us through March.”

With so few customers coming in, Botta has shortened  her store hours. Regular store hours were from noon to nine or 10 but Botta says that’s just not necessary anymore. She now opens from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Mondays and noon to 8 p.m. on other days.   She said the only customers buying wine are the people coming home from work from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Similar to many of the other local businesses on Van Brunt Street, Botta said she didn’t start her shop for the money.

“We didn’t have any dollar signs in our eyes,” she said. “We didn’t have any ambitions to be rich, we just wanted to make a living.”

Despite many obstacles in the road to recovery, Botta remains optimistic that the business will survive through the expected rough holiday season and is looking to fulfill her promise.

“We said we would give it five years to see if it would last,” she said. “And in year three, we got Sandy. So we’re going to wait and see. It’ll be tough but we expect to make it through March.”

Photo: Botta di Vino. Source: BottaDiVino.net.

Although New Yorkers thought their own elected officials did a good job responding to Superstorm Sandy they think New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did a better job, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.

Almost 90 percent of New York City voters thought the New Jersey governor’s response was “excellent” or “good”.

Quinnipiac surveyed 1,165 New York City voters from November 14 to November 18.  The poll has a margin of error of  plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Other high score receivers included New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg as well as President Barrack Obama.

“That love fest between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and President Barack Obama seems to have moved voters especially,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in a statement. “…it seems a hug or two never hurts.”

Christie claimed victory with 89 percent of the votes, free run 5.0 Cuomo came in second with 85 percent, Obama got 84 percent and in last place was New York’s own Mayor Bloomberg with 56 percent.

According to the poll Mayor Bloomberg’s response to the hurricane helped boost his overall approval ratings from 34 percent to 56 percent, his highest in two years.

In contrast New Yorkers gave poor marks to the utility companies after the storm. It showed that 58 percent of voters said the utility companies’ response was “not so good” or “poor”. But 37 percent of the university’s voters thought the response of the utility companies was “excellent” or “good.”

Moreover 75 percent of the  voters thought the MTA did an “excellent” or “good” job dealing with the hurricane.

Another post-Sandy issue mentioned in the poll was the city’s odd-even gas rationing system. Voters gave the system very high marks, 85 percent of the voter thought the gas rationing system worked giving it a “excellent” or “good.”

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved appropriating $500 million in emergency for funding city schools and hospitals that suffered severe damages due to Hurricane Sandy.

“We were hit pretty bad” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn in a press conference  before the Council met.

FEMA was expected to reimburse most of the  money, added Quinn. Of the $500 million, $200 would go to repairing schools, and $300 to the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC). Cleaning oil spills and fixing damaged electrical wiring were cited as two major needs in flooded hospitals.

The storm forced the closing of more than 23 schools, and caused extensive damage to several hospitals.

One of the hospitals to suffer the most damage was Coney Island Hospital in Zone A, which was completely evacuated after losing power due to flooding.

Councilmember Domenic Recchia, who represents Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Brighton Beach and Gravesend and who also serves  as chairman  of the finance committee, suffered much damage  to his own house

“I just want to say how much we appreciate and thank you for all you have done. It touched my heart” he told the committee as it approved the funding measure.

Earlier in the day, Quinn at a UFT fundraiser launched what many observers viewed as an opening shot in the upcoming mayoral contest by becoming thr first potential candidate to espouse major steps to avoid theworst effects of future storms by building floodgates in local harbors and burying all electric wires underground.

Mayor Bloomberg in Rockaway later in the day disparaged the proposals by asking, “Where’s the money gonna come from?

Brooklyn Councilmember Letitia James told an anecdote at the Council meeting: “I met a woman with a thick accent. She was from Russia I think. She grew up near the sea and wanted to live near the sea when she came here. But the sea turned on her. And now all she wants is a plate of food.”