Three months after Sandy, victims waiting for relief

NEW YORK—Devon Lawrence neatly stacked bricks on the gas burner of his kitchen stove and turned up the blue flame, creating a sort of radiator that warmed the ice-cold room.

His two-story house in the Far Rockaway section of Queens hasn’t had working heat since Superstorm Sandy’s floodwaters destroyed the oil burner in the basement. Now mold is growing upstairs because the house has been cold and damp for so long.

Lawrence wakes early every morning to heat the bricks and light a kerosene space heater while his 75-year-old mother sits in bed in a hat and gloves.

“That way she doesn’t freeze,” said Lawrence, a former Army medic who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Even the dog is cold.”

Three months after Sandy struck, thousands of storm victims in New York and New Jersey are stuck in limbo. Waiting for the heat to come on, for insurance money to come through, for loans to be approved. Waiting, in a broader sense, for their upended lives to get back to normal.

While Congress passed a $50.5 billion emergency aid package on Monday, many say the rebuilding has been complicated over the past several weeks by bureaucracy. Some people are still living in mold-infested homes, while others are desperately trying to persuade the city to tear theirs down. Illegal immigrants who don’t qualify for federal aid are struggling to scrape by. Small businesses are shutting down in neighborhoods where nobody seems to shop anymore.

Federal officials say they understand the frustration and are working as quickly as possible to compensate people for their losses and rebuild.

“The infrastructure and the homes that were in place that Sandy took away took a lot longer than 90 days to be built up and put into place,” said Michael Byrne, who is overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Sandy response in New York state. “If there’s any assurances I can give folks that feel that way, we’re not leaving until we get it done.”

The Oct. 29 storm damaged or destroyed 305,000 housing units and disrupted more than 265,000 businesses in New York state. About 14,000 housing units have been repaired so far through New York City’s Rapid Repairs program. In New Jersey, 346,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged, and 190,000 businesses affected. Nearly 18,000 households have received aid for repairs from FEMA.