Drive-by politicians

Haven't posted in a while, doing the inventory of what was lost for the insurance company has consumed much of my free time over the past month when I am not working on repairing our home. I am just about wrapping that up, and now, lucky you, get to read my thoughts, hopes, fears,  experiences, nightmares and delights. It's a regular roller coaster over here lately!

So, I went to our Village Hall yesterday (Island Park’s new temporary one-- The one in a trailer because our village hall was wiped away along with all of our village records). I stopped in to drop off some Christmas Cheer for our hard working village employees, and discuss the message I received the day before from the City Manager of Long Beach. He said that he was happy to announce that Long Beach was the first recipient of a FEMA grant from Sandy. He said they received 24 million dollars through the work of Senator Charles Schumer. I was wondering if our village had received a FEMA grant as well. Of course everyone laughed. We are all very happy for Long Beach. They were devastated and deserve it, but no, we hadn’t received a grant from FEMA. I don’t understand that. 

Our village lost everything. Everything. Hearing my friend Rose tick off the list was like a smack in the face. We lost our library, our post office, our village hall. We lost all of our houses of worship. The Methodist Church, The Catholic Church, The Greek Orthodox Church, and The Jewish Synagogue. We lost our elementary school. We lost every business. All of it. I realized all of these things individually, but had never run the list down in my head or out loud. How can you hear that recitation and not shed a tear? 

How can you be aware of that and not show up for us when you are supposed to represent us? How do these shameless politicians drive right through our town to get to the photo op in Long Beach, and they don’t even get out of their cars for a simple “hey, how ya doin?” in Island Park? I learned yesterday that not a one of these politicians have stepped over the threshold of our new village hall (the trailer in the LIRR parking lot.) No, not even Dean Skelos who stood on my front steps, shook my hand, and asked for my vote the weekend before the storm. Not Ed Mangano, not our new rep (after redistricting) Carolyn McCarthy. Not Governor Cuomo, Charles Schumer, nor Kirsten Gillibrand. Not Anthony Santino, not Howard Kopel, and not Kate Murray. Well Kate did show up this past weekend for a half hour stop with Santa at the fire house, finally – 7 weeks after the storm! They have all been to Long Beach for their photos, and most have had to drive through Island Park to get there.

There are two “Hamlets” in our town’s zip code. Barnum Island and Harbor Isle. After it became apparent that those hamlets had been abandoned by anyone that could help them, our Mayor took on those hamlets as well. He, and we, all realized they were getting no representation from their town and county officials. Someone had to help them, so Mayor Ruzicka did. 

After watching all of the relief trucks bypass us for Long Beach, we are now watching all of the tractor trailers full of refuse cart the whole mess out of Long Beach, Lido Beach, Atlantic Beach, and Point Lookout. All of the aid came in through our town, and all of the garbage is leaving through our town, but not much stops in our town.

Shameless.

Care packages from The Salvation Army, the unsung heroes who've been here since the beginning!


The bleach was leaking, but hey, still works!

What are those strange wooden contraptions in there?







I'm going to have to explain and demonstrate how that clothes line and wooden clothes pins work to my children (and some of my friends!) Ya gotta love it! :)

I am told there will be a warming station set up in town today. This will be a place with satellite television, chargers and heat. No word yet on a shelter with beds, but it is warmer now. The snow has melted and the temperature is supposed to be in the fifties today. Tomorrow the sixties!

I have to say our mayor and village employees are doing a great job cleaning up. The garbage trucks were out immediately in the aftermath. The guys were going around first collecting any garbage that they could determine had food in it. They were relentless, picking through garbage piles to find bags, boxes, anything that contained food which would draw rodents. That was no easy feat as people were pouring their homes into the streets!

     Most blocks in the village have had the pay loader treatment I explained yesterday, and it's not quite as depressing driving through them. I know the sidewalks will fill up again since a lot of people just left things as is until the insurance adjusters come. They are going to have mold problems. The  black mold was already creeping up the studs when we opened the walls.
     Our first floor is gutted now of everything below 27 inches. Many people had water up to the tops of their windows and will have to gut everything out. Others will just need to be bulldozed.

We drove over into Long Beach again yesterday and boy oh boy, they have a time ahead of them. It made me really appreciate what a great job our little village is doing ourselves.

More good news, the Red Cross has come to town! Hooray! They were driving the streets with hot meals for all of the people. People came streaming out of their houses for hot dogs, baked ziti and other meals cooked up by Southern Baptist Convention. The truck in our neighborhood had a Spanish speaking volunteer, and I found a very nice woman from Red Cross at the FEMA tent to help my neighbor.

The Red Cross has been kind of persona non grata in our town because they've been noticeably absent. The Salvation Army on the other hand, has been here big time, and they have become town favorites.

I spoke with one of the volunteers from the Red Cross and she said they were ready to go the day after the storm but weren't allowed to. That was very cryptic. What did she mean, they weren't allowed to? She said they have rules and regulations to follow and they need approval from Washington to move in. As a result they didn't get on the ground in Long Island until Saturday.
   
 The man who was driving the food truck said he'd spent days up on the North Shore feeding people with big cars and even bigger boats. He didn't understand why they weren't in our town sooner. Hey, we've got some pretty big cars and boats down here too,our boats are just capsized and our cars are underwater- like our mortgages! But hey,we all need to eat, right?

Understanding the workings of FEMA and the Red Cross is a job in itself. Everyone wants everything from FEMA but I've been told repeatedly, FEMA just pays. I still don't know why they can't pay for a generator for a shelter, but they don't, and the Red Cross doesn't have any. They do the food, the cots, hygiene kits, etc.
More later...

Aerial Photo's of Hurricane Sandy's destruction

"It's all just stuff"

A Fish Tale

Day 11 and there is still no warm dry shelter in Island Park. Was at the FEMA tent yesterday and I asked one of the Reps if they planned on putting one there. Was there any possibility they would even erect a warming station for the people there? She told me “FEMA doesn’t do that, FEMA writes checks and pays for things, The Red Cross does that.”  

Well the Red Cross is not doing that. Is there any way FEMA could write a check and pay for a big tent with a generator and some heaters? Then we could maybe beg up some cots from the Red Cross so my neighbors have a warm dry place to lay their heads?

As I’m having this conversation I spy one of my neighbors walking in circles with her child’s hand grasped tightly in hers. Her child is autistic and has very special needs. She comes up to me and mimics “Could you give me a hand here? I don’t know what to do” by shaking her head and raising her shoulders.  She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Spanish but I know she is looking for help. She has been left behind.

Most of the people here drive into town, work on their homes, and then drive out to stay overnight in someplace warm and dry with friends or family (as I do). As I write this I realize her child has no milk. I know this because she has no car, there are no buses running through town -- unless she wants to go to a shelter in the middle of the island. There is no supermarket, not even a convenience store or bodega. The relief tents, faith based groups and volunteers only have bottled water and formula (which is always in need). She might be feeding her that, if the kid would drink it. I don’t know. That stuff’s nasty.

I pull someone off line who looks like he’ll speak Spanish and ask him to ask her if she has put in an application. Does she have a bank account? (Direct deposit - from what I understand that’s the quickest way to get some money out of these guys).  Does she know they’ll give her a couple of month’s rent if she can find an apartment somewhere warm and dry? No, yes and no.

So I find a FEMA rep that speaks Spanish and explain to him that she has an autistic child, is living alone in the dark, in a house that stinks like fish, with this child and no heat. She won’t go to some far off shelter. I don’t think I would either.  At times like these, we all go to our family and friends. Her family is in another country, not another town, and her friends are right here with her.  She needs to go to the top of whatever list they have. He agrees and off they go. I look around at so many people just like her and think, this is a clusterfuck.

I get the update from the village trailer, and copies of it to deliver to my other neighbors and go back to my house where my husband and his friends from work are ripping out the floors and walls. These guys have formed up groups that travel from one house to the next clearing out homes and ripping out walls and floors with their fellow coworkers who suffered hurricane damage.

In the streets are our homes and the pieces of our past. There are lines of debris stacked three, four and five feet high, lining block, after block, after block.  Crews walk down the sidewalk pushing everything into the street, then pay loaders scoop it up and fill tractor trailer after tractor trailer with it all.

Our Parish Center is a gathering station for people who want to head off to a shelter, but there is no heat there. The boiler is shot. We have a generator that we use for the annual San Genaro feast powering the place up for Election Day, community meetings and the like. That needs gas (which is hard to come by) so it only gets kicked on for things like that. 

They held a meeting there last night about reopening the schools. They are shooting to open one, the middle school, next Wednesday. They got a hold of a one megawatt generator to power it. The teachers walked the blocks going from house to house to find out how many children would be coming back. They found 178. The school superintendent visited the shelters in the middle of the island and found 15 more. Normally we have over 600 between the middle and elementary schools. She says by law, if they are located within 50 miles of the school, and want to come back, she has to send buses to collect them. There are no traffic lights working south of Atlantic Avenue. The buses can't run without working traffic lights, so school may not start on Wednesday, even if the school is ready (which it's not, they are still cleaning out flood damage and ripping up the gym floor).

The mayor spoke about the situation in the village and the meeting turned into a lot of screaming about electricity, gas, heat, lack of information, demands from politicians (who weren't there), and general snickering. I think the mayor is doing a pretty good job for what he has to handle. 

There are a lot of people from faith based groups and churches from all over the country here. They are going from house to house, and driving the neighborhoods offering food, water, a helping hand and a sympathetic shoulder. These people make a huge difference and are really appreciated. May God Bless them all! 

Moral of the story: save yourselves and your neighbors. If you’re waiting for the government to come do it for you, you’re going to have a long, cold wait.

Election Day

Thanks everyone, for all of your thoughts, prayers and offers of food, clothing and lodging, but we are fine. We have friends and family close by and helping us out. I am posting all of these things so people can see what is going on and maybe get some kind of idea what it's like. 

Even I am on the fringes of it, as my family has a warm, dry place to stay. Many of my neighbors do not. They are in a town that was under water, with no heat or electricity with garbage piled high in the streets, as the temperatures head below freezing. They are living like this with their children!

Some were lucky enough to score a generator and plug in an electric heater. Others are just piling on the clothes and looking for more clean, dry layers.

This is our new Village Hall.

If you want to help (and you know you'll feel better if you do) check out Island Harvest's Facebook page for ideas, they are on the ground here. Or send a check to Sacred Heart Parish at 301 Long Beach Road in Island Park, NY 11558.

Father Tutone (now Monsignor) cleaned out the Parish Center (which was under 4 feet of water) himself. That is where Ivarone Brothers fed our neighbors on Sunday. That is where our Jewish neighbors celebrated their High Holy Days when the pipes in their synagogue broke this year. That is where our School superintendent will hold a meeting on Thursday about the school situation, and that is where we always have a food pantry for neighbors in need. That is the place we can always count on when we are in need. That is even where voting was conducted today. Ironic isn't it?

ROBO-CALLS

Got a robo-call at my Mother in-laws from FEMA. They have finally decided we are truly in a disaster area and we have been approved to seek shelter in a hotel which they will cover until November 10th. Really? There's not a hotel room to be had on Long Island. The people who waited for some kind of assistance from the government are screwed yet again.  The people who are occupying the hotels now, had some money or credit to get into a hotel. The people who desperately need it, are still in homes in the disaster area.  Many had no money, or transportation, or place to go to, to get out. 

And Hello! They have no phones! I got a call on a land line. I've not gotten a single call from FEMA on my cell phone, even though I gave them that number. For days there was no cell service, but there is now. None of my friends are receiving any information or phone calls from FEMA on their cell phones. I  spoke with people yesterday who submitted applications for aid and had no idea about lodging at a hotel. One family chose to stay in their home since there are no rooms left, and the other decided they finally had enough of the cold and were headed to a shelter (which scares the crap out of every mother I talk to).

FEMA needs to relinquish control to the local governments, and just open their wallets. A whole week before some federal bureaucrat decided these living, breathing American's are truly living in a disaster area and needed help. Our Governor knew it the next day, maybe they could have trusted him?

Day 8:

They are taking donations at the Rockville Rec in Rockville Centre, NY, and they've opened the gym for the children to play. I'm sitting in a corner on the floor in the gym crying thinking about what I saw when I went home today while my kids play here. 

This photo is one of the FEMA containers with piles of clothes on the ground that my neighbors are picking through as they try to find something clean and dry to wear. They shut off the gas to the town today, temperatures are supposed to drop below freezing, there's a nor'easter coming, and I can't fit the whole town in my mother in -laws small apartment :(

The Day after Sandy

Hi all!

In answer to all of the texts, voicemails and inboxes, we are all okay, dry and hunkering down with Grandma in RVC. Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers.

We've had no phone, cable or internet service here and cell phone service is also down. The super hyped Verizon 3G doesn't work at all either. Phone and cable just came back on about 15 minutes ago here, thank goodness, so while it's up and running I'll update you while I can.

Yesterday I parked my truck on Long Beach Road and hiked several blocks through water up to my knees to get to our home. There were trees down everywhere. I was expecting to find the huge old swamp maple that hangs over our home collapsed into it, but that old sucker was still standing! There were some soffits and gutters down, and pumpkins, firewood, telephone poles, fences and other debris smacked up against the house and garage. Okay, I thought, the garage is flooded. I had expected that after listening to the news, even though that's never happened before. That's at an elevation of 7 1/2 feet. 

When I looked up at the front door I saw a piece of driftwood sitting where the welcome mat should be and instantly knew that the main floor of the house had been flooded. That's at an elevation of 10 1/2 feet. We have the highest elevation (for the first finished floor) on our block. When I opened the door I found out that my fears were correct. We got about a foot of water on the main floor, so that means the tide surged to about 11 1/2-12 feet. The house stinks like fish and we are going to have to toss everything in the garage and on the first floor. We have flood insurance, so hopefully it will all be covered. I've been meaning to pare down lately anyway. 

We have not suffered nearly as badly as so many of our friends and neighbors. Like I said our home was higher than most. No one in our town escaped damage. Many have total losses! All of their belongings; furniture, clothes, photo's, keepsakes and family treasures are gone or destroyed. There are homes that need to be totally rebuilt. I've heard about quite a number of fires out here as well as the mind numbing numbers in Breezy (where we also have friends) and will try to verify those things now that we have Internet and news access again. 

There are boats everywhere, in front of the car wash, the gas station, the funeral parlor, even the entrance to Ruby Tuesday! There's no gas, because the electricity is out. One Hess station was open a couple towns over, but the lines were as long as they were in the 1970's during the gas crisis.

It's a really sad sight, but we're a hard working lot around this town. We're used to taking our knocks, and still caring for our neighbors, families and friends. None of us are going to crawl up and die. Time to clean up and rebuild. 

Thanks for your prayers, and please keep them up for our neighbors who are suffering so much more than we are.

Love to you all!