Survivor of Hurricane Sandy: One Year Later

I take pride that I come from NJ and when hit with a disaster we rise to the occasion to help those in need. That is what happened October 29, 2012. I  was home in Warren, NJ with my family sitting around the TV watching the news when the power went out. We ended sleeping in the basement of our basement because the winds were so turbulent that trees were coming down around our house. We woke up to Sandy’s destruction around us. We couldn't get out our neighborhood because there was trees and power lines down everywhere. We got a call that my cousins house was hit by several trees and that there was a gaping hole in their roof. They lived less than a mile from us. We were fortunate that a tree fell to the side of our house.

My dad, my brothers, and I got dressed, grabbed our chainsaws and started to make our way over to our cousins house. Along the way we helped to clear out major roads because people needed to get out. When we got to their house, we teamed up with 20 other friends and family members to clear out about 4-6 trees.  But that wasn't the worst of it. It was just the beginning.

My family and I went without power for 2 weeks. My dad decided to bring my mom and my younger siblings to a hotel once some of the major roads were cleared. My dad got us  a generator about a week after Sandy made landfall. Gas stations started to monitor how much gas they would be giving out. There was countless night of waiting online to fill up my car along with gas cans for the generator. I remember meeting a gentleman waiting on line for gas and he said that he had a house down in Ortley Beach, NJ. He had his house was lost to so much damage, that his neighbors house had been removed from its stilts, and that he wasn't allowed to go back to get his belongings because there was so much debris everywhere.

The most memorable moment for me came two days after Sandy made landfall. My brother heard that New Dorp Staten Island wasn't getting any attention from FEMA or government officials. He decided to go with some of his friends and went, on behalf of Congressman Michael Grimm, to help to provide people with information on how to start to claim property damage to so many houses. I heard what he was going and asked to go with him the next day.

I arrived the next day to what seemed to be a war zone. Debris everywhere and people calling for people to help them with removing all water damaged material from their houses. I grabbed a sledge hammer, gloves, facemasks, shovels, garbage bags and started to help people where ever they were. Cars had been destroyed by the surge. We ran into a recent retired NYPD officer which my team and I helped to renovate his basement.  His brother in law was there for the wave surge. He described it to be like a tsunami rolling into town. The sad part about it was that even though I was helping people to restore their lives, the material that I was throwing out was people’s memories and life savings. These people lost everything literally.

The most encouraging thing was the resilience and the willingness of people to help those in need especially when the government was slow to give a hand. That is the American way. We may live different lives but when our way of life is threatened and altered, we put aside our differences and help those that need it. In this tragedy, we proved that we are Stronger than the Storm. This is a good insight of where we have come from. Coming Back: A Year of Recovery So let us think back and not forget that there are still people recovering from this event even after one year.