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.