TELEPHONE POLES EMBEDDED IN CARS
N A SUNNY October morning, as a soft Atlantic breeze wafts over the sand, George Donley stands outside his beloved Breezy Point home.
Everywhere he looks on this gorgeous day, the 68-year-old neighborhood lifer can see the past. And, with a bit of time-tempered optimism, the future.
Five years ago, Donley remembers taking a 40-minute odyssey through a nightmarish obstacle course created by Mother Nature to see what remained of his beachfront home. His eyes mist just slightly as he sips coffee in a diner off Breezy Point’s two-lane main drag and recalls the perilous trip.
“I had to climb over downed telephone poles,” he recounts. “And poles embedded in cars, some right through the windshields. A dead cat, stuck between two pieces of broken deck, all caught in the surge.
“It was like something out of a movie. I cried when I got there.”
As the fifth anniversary of the Oct. 29, 2012, real-life disaster called Hurricane Sandy looms, he looks over at the Donley residence.
It’s raised up on pylons, surrounded by green-painted plywood well suited for the so-called “Irish Riviera” — but not for occupancy. The work is now in the hands of the city’s Build It Back plan.
“Don’t even ask,” he says with a sigh. “I’m hoping for next summer.”
So it goes in the exclusive Queens enclave, struck five years ago by a biblical plague that lacked only locusts: Ceaseless rain, massive flooding, raging fire.
“I read someplace that scientists determined this was a once every 700-year storm,” Donley says. “That’s one time since Christopher Columbus arrived.”
While many homes are fully restored, raised higher to protect against the ocean’s next assault, a ride down Rockaway Point Blvd. tells a tale of two Breezys.
American flags still flap in the wind from every street light, each additionally festooned with healing, post-disaster “Stars of Hope.”
Not as prevalent, but just as visible, are endless sheets of Tyvek house wrap on new construction or renovations. A crew digs a hole for a foundation at the far end of the boulevard. Vacant lots blot the landscape, like missing teeth in a once-bright smile.
Donley, outside his home, points out three vacant lots and two homes barricaded with plywood as they await work. A dumpster filled with the remnants of his place’s old foundation sits in the middle of the street.
Count Donley among the critics of the city’s ongoing Build It Back program. Work on his home began this past May 18. On only 15 days since has he seen workers at the site.
“I have to blame the city bureaucracy,” he says evenly. “It’s just so overwhelming, and so many different departments, each treating you like they’re running their own little countries.
“Getting two of the agencies to talk is like bringing people to the table to talk about ending a war.”
Like many in Breezy Point, Donley’s connection goes back decades.
His family purchased a bungalow when Donley was just 10, seven years after his aunt bought her place. He worked as a lifeguard on the ocean beach, unaware his future wife, Chris, was living with her parents on the bay side.
Donley embraced the Breezy lifestyle: Beach, beer, blue collar.
Cops and firefighters found a respite from the rigors of work in the sand and sun. The younger Donley daughter, Ciara, married a police officer from a Breezy Point clan.
After raising their family in Valley Stream, L.I., the Donleys arrived at 103 Oceanside Ave. in 2003. Three years later, when the house needed work, their neighbors from two doors down welcomed George and Chris into their home in true Breezy Point style.
On Oct. 29, 2012, those same neighbors were swimming for their lives as the raging storm flooded everything. The Sugar Bowl, a popular local bar just steps from their front door, was reduced to rubble.
The venerable bar spared the Donley home from even worse damage, taking the brunt of the massive storm surge.
A raging fire with 60-foot flames destroyed 135 homes, and the powerful hurricane damaged hundreds more of the 2,800 local residences.
Donley watched on television as Breezy Point turned into hell on earth. Incredibly, not a single resident was killed.
When he returned to Breezy Point on Halloween, everything in his house — furniture, televisions, TV sets — was piled against the inland-facing wall.
“As if Bigfoot had picked up the place and tilted it,” he said. “The storm surge just drove everything against the wall.”
Donley tried to remain optimistic, but wife Chris wasn’t so sure.
“I hope we’re still alive to come back when it’s fixed,” she said. One of their neighbors did not make it, passing away while the rebuilding continued.
The Donleys were back in the house by July 2013, fixing up what they could amid the wreckage. They’re down to the hurry up and wait stage now, as Build it Back works to pour a new foundation for the still-airborne home.
Donley’s frustration is leavened by his inherent optimism — he’s even written a memoir about Hurricane Sandy titled “Someone Else Always Has It Worse.”
“It’s been a long haul,” he said. “But I’m pretty upbeat. Pretty confident.”