I woke-up to a changed world,2 years ago this morning.
This is someone else's story but Tens of thousandshad the same story.
A Survivor's Tale: Superstorm Sandy Two Years Out
Wish us luck. Wish us all luck.
By Patricia A. Miller (Patch Staff)Updated October 29, 2014 at 8:10 pm
Patricia A. Miller, a Patch editor for four years, lived the worst of it when Superstorm Sandy struck. On the second anniversary of the storm, she’s got her home but has still lost so much. As have many others. This is her personal account.)
The American flag at Central Regional High School snapped in a brisk east wind the day the high school dedicated its Alumni Memorial on Oct. 26, 2012.
The sky had a strange yellow tinge, mixed in with pewter clouds. The sun was still out. But anyone in that day’s audience knew something bad was headed their way. Very bad.
The night before, Berkeley police drove slowly through our Toms River Shores neighborhood several times. It was only the second time in our two decades of living in Bayville they had done so. The first came during Hurricane Irene in 2011, which sputtered out and missed the coastline.
“This is an evacuation order,” the officer said through the police cruiser’s public address system. “All residents must be out by noon on Monday. All residents must be out by noon Monday.”
I try to forget the fear I felt, knowing Superstorm Sandy was barreling towards us. I try to forget my pathetic efforts to prepare for the massive storm. I try to push away the thoughts that it could happen again.
But sometimes I can’t.
Three days later, the landscapes in Bayville and shore towns up and down the Jersey Coast would be forever altered when the monster storm slammed ashore.
One of my neighbors, who was on higher ground up the street, told me he came out at 11 p.m. that Monday night and looked down the roadway. It was wet but still clear.
Fifteen minutes later, things had changed.
“All of a sudden the water rose four feet in the street,” he said.
The storm surge sent 14 inches of water into our garage. Seven inches soaked the interior of the house. The hardwood floors in our living room buckled. The back-up refrigerator and everything else in our garage was floating.
Our front yard looked like a lake. A beautiful blue spruce was ripped out by its roots. Sandy’s violent winds took down four of our trees.
One of our neighbors rowed me to the house. My son sloshed through about two feet of icy water. He peered in the windows.
“You might be alright, Mom,” he said
But when we walked into the house, things were not alright.
We were out of our house for seven months. Seven months of waiting for more insurance money to be disbursed, arranging for contractors, treating the house for mold and lugging most our sodden belongings to the curb.
The sheetrock had to be cut out up to four feet, to prevent mold. All of the floors were ripped up. At one point you could see through the floor joists to the damp crawl space below. All the electrical wiring, all the plumbing, kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures had to be torn out.
When the subfloors were in, I wrote stories on the living room hearth, the only place to sit in the unheated house. We came home two days before Memorial Day weekend 2013. There is still work to be done and the house has to be raised.
But we were far luckier than many. There are many who are not back home yet and have no idea when they will be.
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Take the couple from Toms River who preferred to keep their names private. Their Silverton home in Toms River was about a third of a mile in from Silver Bay.
More than four feet of water surged into their home on Oct. 29, 2012. The water was up to the window sills, says the wife’s sister, Maryanne Taylor.
They had already had more than their share of problems before Sandy hit. The husband was in a bad car accident and needed three back surgeries. The wife’s mother was frail and ill, but she graciously allowed them to move into her Brick Township home.
The couple stayed 20 months until her mother died. Then the house was put up in an estate sale. They had to move.
Now they pay $1,800 a month for a small home with a short-term lease.
The house has sat gutted to the studs and subfloor for over a year. The couple had flood and homeowner’s insurance, but not enough to rebuild their three-bedroom home.
They have gone through three state-approved contractors, since Gov. Chris Christie fired two. The last contractor keeps promising he will be there “soon,” Taylor said.
Ironically, the home they had to rent sits across the street from their rotting house.
“They look across the street at their sad, dilapidated family home and wonder when will it ever be rebuilt,” Taylor said.
Gov. Chris Christie was to appear Wednesday in two different locations. Each time the governor pays a visit to Ocean County, the event is heavily choreographed. Usually his staff trots out a weeping, grateful homeowner, one of the ones lucky enough to be back in their rebuilt home.
The weeping, grateful homeowner then invariably praises Christie for making their return possible. Then there are the cheery, happy photo ops on the boardwalks.
But none of that matters to the people still waiting. And there are thousands of them.
Neighborhoods in transition
I use the Good Luck Point section of Bayville to gauge the level of recovery in our area. Good Luck Point was once home to modest two-to-three bedroom ranches, many owned by working-class families who inherited the houses and winterized them.
Sandy devastated Good Luck Point. You can see where houses once stood by the mailboxes on the roadway. There are a few new, expensive homes going up, way up. Most are obviously not in the $150,000 RREM grant range. To put up those kind of homes, you had money, and lots of it, before the storm.
A few of the modest ranches remain, battered by wind and water, waiting for demolition. The gentrification of Good Luck Point is underway.
If you want to see what Good Luck Point looked like two weeks after the storm, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDDfdOU_Ciw.
Our own neighborhood has also sadly changed. Houses for sale sit for months. One of my older friends sold her ranch home for a pittance in January 2013 and moved to Missouri. She died this summer. Some say the stress from Sandy killed her.
Another friend and her husband won’t be coming home. They still had a mortgage on their home and can’t afford to rebuild, even with grants and ICC money. They had three feet of water in their house and a tree fell on it at the height of the storm. So it sits, looking more desolate with each passing day.
Her sister’s home across the street was heavily damaged too. She won’t be coming back either. The stress of the storm and rebuilding was too much for her.
It’s a lonely street these days.
We are now working our way through the RREM program. Our house was more than 50 percent damaged and has to be raised. We don’t know if there will be enough money to do what has to be done.
So next time you pass by a battered Sandy home, don’t be so quick to say ”why isn’t that torn down yet?” Chances are there’s a heartbreaking reason for why it’s still standing.
Wish us luck. Wish us all luck.
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