‘Suffering’ from Sandy lingers on

Damage cost tops $80 bln in hardest-hit states

FAR ROCKAWAY, New York, Nov 30, (Agencies): A month after historic megastorm Sandy tore through his beachside neighborhood in New York’s Rockaways, Gary Hamilton still has no electricity, heating or hot water.

The storm, a confluence of a hurricane and a nor’easter that hit the New York area starting on Oct 29, killed more than 110 people in the United States and caused an estimated billions of dollars in damage.

When the storm was at its worst, the first floor of Hamilton’s home was flooded with more than three feet (a meter) of water. A month later, he could be found ripping out the floor of his still “unlivable” house.

“We lost almost everything,” said the 50-year-old.

He works every minute he can on getting it back into shape and is not sleeping much.

Hamilton estimated the process could take six months, saying “we’ve been promised a lot of help, but we’ll see what we get.”

Happy

But he is happy to be alive — and said he’s not moving anywhere, after 38 years of living in the neighborhood.

At the house next door, four young Mormon missionaries were pulling out rubble and piling it in the street. They were working on cutting out the walls from a basement that was completely soaked by the storm.

The yard was filled with a giant pile of debris that had once been the family’s belongings.

Those who remain survive as best they can. With disaster relief assistance, they stay warm with blankets and get light from generators.

A number of rescue centers are still open in the area, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), churches, and the city. Although the neighborhood has more recently attracted some of New York’s younger and more affluent denizens, most of the 130,000 residents made up “one of the poorest communities in America,” even before Sandy, said Les Mullings, pastor of the Nazarene Church of Far Rockaway.

“It is improving, gradually,” Mullings said of the current situation. “But progress is slow. It is frustrating, very frustrating.”

Under normal circumstances, his church gave food and other assistance to around 500 people a week. Lately, it has been helping 2,500 a day.

In front of his church, two trucks distribute hot meals. Inside is a third distribution point. And along the sidewalk a few meters (feet) away, a long line of people, mainly women, wait patiently despite the biting cold in the hopes of filling shopping carts with clothes, blankets and cleaning supplies.

Meanwhile, Congress on Thursday took its first hard look at the damage from Superstorm Sandy amid appeals for tens of billions of dollars in additional disaster assistance to rebuild from one of the most destructive storms ever to hit the Northeast.

Testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, lawmakers from states incurring the most damages painted a painted a grim picture of destruction from the late October storm that left 131 people dead.

Battered

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, one of the hardest-hit states, said more than 300,000 homes were seriously damaged from New York City to the eastern tip of Long Island alone. He said more than 20 million square feet of commercial offices are still closed.

Democratic Sen Frank Lautenberg, cited Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that nearly 72,000 buildings were damaged in New Jersey, which was also hard hit by the storm. He said along the battered coast, storm surges destroyed neighborhoods, ruined businesses, and displaced families.

Democratic Rep Bill Pascrell said a storm surge flooded the Passaic Valley treatment plant, shutting down the system that handles sewage from 1.5 million customers in northern New Jersey. New Jersey Transit, which has a daily ridership of nearly 1 million people, suffered flooded tunnels and crippled hubs. He said PSEG, the state’s largest utility, had more than $100 million in damage to its infrastructure.

In Connecticut, Sen Richard Blumenthal said nearly a third of at least 3,000 homes are uninhabitable.

Congress, facing tight budget constraints with the fiscal cliff budget talks, seems to be in no mood to move quickly to approve additional spending.

In related story a month after megastorm Sandy plowed through the northeastern United States, the bill for damage inflicted in the three hardest-hit US states is topping $80 billion.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Thursday, a month to the day after the storm struck, he was upping his earlier estimates of the storm’s heavy costs in his state, now putting the price at $36.9 billion.

“I’ve called this experience New Jersey’s Katrina because the damage to our state is nothing that we’ve experienced ever before,” Christie said, referring to a 2005 hurricane that swamped New Orleans and the US Gulf of Mexico coast.