BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- The construction noises are almost constant at daytime in this coastal enclave six months after Hurricane Sandy, but for many residents whose homes were badly damaged, recovery is moving at a slow pace – or not at all.

Many of those displaced by the so-called superstorm say they are stuck in limbo, trying to raise money to pay for repairs or replace their homes while coming to grips with new, federal flood-zone maps that many fear will make it too costly for them to return.

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“We're no better off than we were six months ago," said Kieran Burke, a fire marshal who lost his home to a massive fire that erupted at the height of the storm. " ... I'd like to have an idea when I can tell my wife our children can go home.”

Burke’s dilemma is not unique to hard-hit Breezy Point, where more than 75 percent of the homes were either consumed by fire or suffered flood damage.

Some 39,000 people in New Jersey remain displaced by the storm, Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday. The number of New Yorkers still out of their homes is unclear, though federal officials said 350 households in the affected region are still getting money for hotel or motel stays.

“We’ve just got the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amount of work that needs to be done,” said Michael Byrne, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's senior official in New York state for the Sandy response and recovery.

Though people now have some resources to rebuild, he said, they “still have some tough questions to answer ... especially people that are in high-risk areas: 'How do I rebuild?' or 'Do I leave, do I seek a buyout?’ So, there’s still a lot of tough issues to be worked out.” 

Sandy blasted ashore on Oct. 29 near Brigantine, N.J., leaving more than at least 147 people dead in its wake in the Caribbean and the U.S., according to the National Hurricane Center. Nearly 74,000 homes and apartments in New York and New Jersey, where it made landfall on Oct. 29, sustained damage, according to FEMA.

Some 450 homes in New York were destroyed by the storm, while approximately 46,000 in New Jersey were destroyed or sustained major damage, according to FEMA.

FEMA has given more than $1.3 billion to more than 180,000 Sandy victims in Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. The National Flood Insurance Program has paid more than $7.1 billion in claims.

                                     View an interactive panorama: Sandy-battered town, then and now

Some survivors whose homes sustained minor damage quickly returned home, as did some others who were able to shelter in place while they repaired and rebuilt.

But in devastated communities like the Irish-American enclave of Breezy Point, many residents had to wait for the gas, power and water to be restored and insurance funds to come through -- if they did -- while still paying mortgages plus rent.

“Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well and some people are up and running,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week. “Some people are still very much in the midst of the recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms. You still have people doubled up. You still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it’s been terrible and horrendous.”

That seems a fitting description of Karly and Anthony Carrozza's situation in their neighborhood in Brick Township, N.J., which is dotted with “for sale” signs. Reconstruction work immediately ground to a halt in January, when FEMA released initial drafts of its new flood maps, which placed the community into the highest risk zone, they said.

If the maps are finalized as drawn, residents’ homes would have to be raised 11 feet and placed on pilings. Some state residents who don’t meet the requirements could face flood insurance premiums of up to $31,000 a year, according to Gov. Christie.

“The cost to put this on pilings would not be worth the value of the house. It wouldn't make any sense,” Anthony Carrozza, 34, an equities trader, said this month of their small home on a lagoon.

But the couple would have to pay off their $300,000 mortgage if they wanted to demolish the house and start anew.

“We're all kind of in the same boat in a sense that until they have the final maps come out we can't make any decisions,” Karly Carrozza, 36, an account executive, said.

She has joined a group of New Jersey citizens facing the same difficult choices -- called Stop FEMA Now -- to advocate for changes to the flood maps. They also have recently ventured to New York City to band forces with homeowners there.

She feels if they don't act, their coastal community will never be the same.

“You could be in the middle class and enjoy a house on the water and I just feel like that's all going to change because a lot of the people around us who are going to walk away -- their homes are worth nothing,” she said. People who could afford to put the houses up to code "are going to come in and just scoop up the property," she added.

In the meantime, the couple is staying nearby with Karly's parents to avoid paying rent in addition to their mortgage. Tarp and plastic cover part of the inside of their home, which took in a few feet of water.

“There's people whose homes look much worse than ours, but it's almost like we're in no different of a predicament because our hands are tied,” Karly said. “We can't make any decisions, we can't move back. ...We're in no different a predicament today than we were the day after the storm.”

Shifting sands have covered nearly all remnants of Kieran Burke’s bungalow in Breezy Point.

The family home, which sat for decades on what were known as the “sand lanes” in this idyllic seaside community, burned to the ground with nearly 130 other residences in the fire – the largest in the city's modern history – that was triggered by the storm.

The Army Corps of Engineers removed the charred remnants earlier this year, leaving just sand across a broad swath of an area known as The Wedge.

Located in one of the older parts of the private cooperative, Burke's home, like those of his neighbors, wasn't fronted on a city-mapped street. That means he will need approval from the NYC Board of Standards and Appeals on rebuilding plans.

The agency has vowed to expedite the process, and the Breezy Point Cooperative is working with architects to design homes that will meet expected new city building requirements, as well as those from the flood maps – a preliminary version of which should be released in the coming weeks. So Burke is still waiting to break ground.

“It’s devastating. It’s angering,” he said of the shifting planning landscape. “I’m paying a mortgage on an empty plot of land, we’re paying rent in a place that we're displaced in, that I have no conception of when I’m going to have the ability to move out of.”

Burke, a New York City fire marshal, and his wife, Jennifer, both 40, have a two-year-old son, Kieran Junior, and they just welcomed another boy, Matthew, a little more than two weeks ago. They've been living in an office converted into an apartment in Yonkers, north of Manhattan and about an hour's drive from Breezy Point.

“It doesn’t really seem to look any different than when I was here before, and I would have thought at least some of the other parts of it would have progressed a bit,” Jennifer Burke, a pharmaceutical research manager, said this month as she stood on the spot where her kitchen used to stand. “We’re just still waiting and still hoping. … The hardest part is just not knowing.”

A few blocks away, in a corner of the community facing Jamaica Bay, the Fischers have moved back into their two-story home, even though it sits amid empty lots where neighbors once lived and is still being worked on.

Christina and Barry Fischer, parents of five children, broke their lease early from a rental in northern Queens in late March because their FEMA rental aid ran out and they had expenses piling up (the FEMA money later came through).

Some painting, tiling, sanding and cabinet work is among what remains to be done on the first floor, but now their children – ranging in age from 5 to 15 – can ride their bikes on Breezy Point’s quiet streets, go to church or the store by themselves, play on the beach and catch up with friends who have returned.

When asked how it was to be home, one of the children, William, 10, exclaimed “Great!” as he snacked on Mallomars. “I can actually go outside.”

Nonetheless, the road has been hard, with Christina Fischer, 35, taking leave from her job as an adjunct professor at St. John's University in Queens to focus on rebuilding, including battling with the insurance over money and fighting for months to get help from the city's “Rapid Repairs” program.

That program, a first-ever federal-local initiative, offered to install free boilers, hot water heaters and do the necessary electrical work to restore power, but many who applied encountered long delays and sloppy workmanship when they did get service.

The family also has two special needs children whose classes and therapy sessions had to be re-arranged in the aftermath as people were displaced and classrooms flooded.

But the Fischers weren’t complaining in early April when a reporter met with them to take stock of how far they'd come. Tim, 7, pushed his bike through the sand, Georgia, 5, watched a movie on a computer tablet and the family dog, Scout, sat atop a pile of laundry as Barry Fischer, a 45-year-old electrician, tested out the new washer and dryer.

“The three greatest words in the English language: home sweet home,” Barry said. “There ... is nothing better.”

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BREEZY POINT, N.Y. — Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Sunday encouraged people in this coastal enclave hard hit by Hurricane Sandy and with strong ties to Ireland to "keep your courage up, keep your spirit up" as they rebuild and said his compatriots were behind them as they soldiered on.

Breezy Point's Catholic Club Pipes & Drums welcomed Kenny, as did hundreds of community members, many who wore kelly green or shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. Kenny joined Mass at St. Thomas More Catholic Church, where the altar was decorated with Irish and American flags flanking an iconic statue of the Virgin Mary saved from the storm rubble, and orange, white and green ribbons were pinned to the pews.

"I'd like to think that in the times ahead ... this community will be restored to a stronger position than it's ever been. It may not be the same physically, but the heart of that community, the strength of that community, will be retained for the future," he said after Mass in a local gym-community center that was restored by Irish athletes and paid for with Irish government funds.

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"Keep your courage up, keep your spirit up. You will never be beaten if you do that," he added, at times mentioning the challenges Ireland had overcome, such as the mid-1800s famine, and the Irish concept of meitheal, or the community coming together to rebuild, to encourage the residents to push on.

 

Hurricane Sandy rampaged through Breezy Point on Oct. 29, unleashing floodwaters that devastated some 75 percent of the community's 2,800 homes and helping to trigger a fire that claimed 126 houses in one of the oldest parts of the neighborhood.

Some 20,000 residential buildings in New York City were damaged by the storm or their utilities were disrupted by it.

Nearly five months later, people are struggling to return to Breezy Point, which was founded by Irish immigrants more than a century ago and is nicknamed the "Irish Riviera." The community is one of the most Irish neighborhoods in America, with more than half of the residents claiming Gaelic heritage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Ireland gave $320,000 to community projects in the areas most affected by Hurricane Sandy, including $50,000 to rebuild the gym-community center in Breezy Point.

Volunteer groups, some from Ireland and others Irish-American, have pitched in to help, such as those who rebuilt the gym and the Catholic Club across the street. The entrance to the gym reads, in Gaelic, "A thousand welcomes."

"In Ireland, everybody knows about Breezy. ... Breezy has just become iconic," said the Consul General of Ireland, Noel Kilkenny. "It just captured the imagination ... Breezy became a piece of Ireland in New York."

Homes here are in various stages of recovery: some have been reoccupied, while others are being rebuilt. Yet many others have been completely demolished, leaving behind only sand or some bits of foundation. Many of these homeowners have to await official approval of their rebuilding plans before they can begin construction.

The toll of the rebuilding process — especially the length and the cost -- is adding up for folks, some who are awaiting insurance payments or other financing options to get back home.

So Kenny's visit -- part of a week-long trip to the United States -- was a welcome boost for the residents, many who can trace their roots to Ireland. 

"I think it really helped the morale of the entire community," said Marty Ingram, fire chief of the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department. "The timing was perfect because, you know, I think it's protracted and we're feeling the long-term effect of ... the impact."

As tears rolled down her face, Denise Sturm, 66, said: "I think it's very touching and it's good to know that people in Ireland have come to help us and we need help, we need that."

She should be able to return home within two months, but others won't: "The sad thing is so many of the people (whose) houses were totally destroyed, the disappointment has come now where whatever the red tape is they're not able to get permits to rebuild."

Sturm's friend, Evelyn Finn, said the visit "strengthens us." Her home, which once belonged to her grandmother, was flooded and may need to be raised several feet according to preliminary federal flood guidelines released in late January. She gets no federal aid since it was a second residence.

"It makes it's real," Finn, 65, who attended Mass with her daughter and four grandchildren, said of Kenny's visit. "It makes it like it's doable. My god, if the prime minister of Ireland took enough time to come and see us ... it must be coming back."

BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- A first-of-its-kind home repair program pioneered by the federal government and local agencies has made thousands of New York City homes livable since Hurricane Sandy, but thousands of other homeowners are still waiting for help, and growing more frustrated with each passing day.

“Nobody communicates anything to you,” said Joe Casale, a 52-year-old service engineer who lives in Breezy Point with his wife, Katie, and three sons. “I have to keep on calling up and busting people’s chops to find out what’s going on. It’s ridiculous. … It’s not rapid for one. We started up on Nov. 15 and they’re just getting around to us now. … They held us back a good month I would say.”

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Despite assessments like Casale's, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, widely vilified for its response after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has mostly avoided a similar public relations disaster in the wake of Sandy. FEMA officials say that’s at least partly due to the Rapid Repairs program, aimed at getting victims back home quickly so they can focus on rebuilding.

The program, which provides free utility repairs and replacement equipment like water heaters and boilers to qualified homeowners, has restored services to more than 11,800 residences in New York City, officials say. Work is under way on about 1,900 more dwellings.

Two neighboring New York counties and two New Jersey communities are also running the same program, which they call STEP (Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power).

While the idea of Rapid Repairs initially received positive reviews, critics say the execution has been far from flawless. Nearly three months after the Oct. 29 storm, some 7,000 New York City households have not yet received help through the program.

That assessment is echoed by those still waiting, who tell stories of canceled or missed appointments, improperly installed equipment and a disorganized bureaucracy where their complaints fall on deaf ears. 

Barry Fischer, a 45-year-old electrician who also lives in this coastal New York City enclave with his wife, Christina, and their five children, called the program “nonexistent,” noting they had been waiting since mid-November for electrical work and a hot water heater. 

His wife, a 35-year-old college professor, said she had been going to the Rapid Repairs’ offices every day to find out when the workers would come to her home. She also made dozens of calls, chased contractors’ trucks through her neighborhood on foot and in her car, and one time even tried to cut them off and block them in with her vehicle in order to force a conversation. 

The final straw came last week, when she met a Rapid Repairs’ worker looking for a nearby home that is only occupied in the summer.

“I was really freaking out,” she said. “… And that’s terrible. Why should somebody be really that crazy in order to get assistance?”

Officials overseeing the program acknowledge there have been missteps and say they understand the frustration building among those who still don’t have basic utilities. But they defend the premise of Rapid Repairs -- that residents can rebuild their homes much more quickly when they are living in them -- and vow to learn from the mistakes, some of which resulted from their efforts to act decisively.

The program was launched two weeks after the storm struck, leaving about 20,000 residential buildings in the city with some damage or disruption to their utilities.

“We thought that with some basic repair work … that would enable families to basically shelter in place, be in their homes, be safe and then begin the real work of rebuilding and doing it in their communities not away from (them),” Cas Holloway, deputy mayor for operations, told NBC News. “We wanted to move fast.”

For many Sandy victims, that’s what happened.

Nine general contractors hired by the city, who in turn have more than 100 subcontractors working with them, had completed repairs on more than 6,800 buildings, comprising 11,800 residential units, as of Jan. 21, according to the mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery. Crews had started work on about 1,900 others.

About 3,000 other households opted out of the program for various reasons, including not wanting to wait for repairs, Holloway said, leaving fewer than 7,000 residences still waiting.

Homeowners had from Nov. 13 through Jan. 14 to sign up for the pilot program. The city will eventually submit the bill to FEMA, which preliminarily authorized spending of up to $500 million and is expected to reimburse between 80 percent and 90 percent of the cost.

The cost for each household is supposed to be about $10,000, though it could go higher depending on the work required, said Michael Byrne, the senior FEMA official in New York state for the Sandy response and recovery.

FEMA: What the program covers

FEMA said it no longer uses the ubiquitous travel trailers that were deployed to temporarily house thousands of Katrina victims, and Holloway and Byrne said mobile homes weren’t viable in the densely-populated urban environment of New York City. They also carry a hefty price tag of $250,000, and take months to set up, they said.

Those already helped by the program said they're happy with the results.

Fran McCabe, who responded to an NBC News inquiry about the program on Facebook, wrote: “Waited for weeks but finally got a hot water heater and then a few weeks later got a new furnace. Work crews were WONDERFUL. … We're very grateful to the city for this program. It would have been much faster to do the repairs privately but the cost was a hardship for us at this time.”

But for families like the Fischers, whose children include a 7-year-old son who is severely hearing impaired and a 4-year-old daughter with Charcot Marie Tooth Disease, a common nerve disorder that can make it hard to walk, and apraxia, a speech disorder, the intended jumpstart has proven to be a roadblock.

They still don’t have central heat, hot water or working toilets in their two-story home, which forced them to sign a one-year rental agreement on a house in Jackson Heights in northern Queens. They’ve had to dip into Barry’s 401(k) savings, since the FEMA rental aid doesn’t cover their entire rent, and they have to pay their mortgage and co-op fees on a home they can’t live in. Adding to the financial strain: Their insurance will cover just one-third of the $300,000 cost to rebuild. 

'Why ... all this insanity?'
While the city has an “active high priority list” for residents in the greatest need of shelter, including the elderly and disabled, and Christina had informed the program many times about her disabled children, she found out last week that they weren’t on it.

Finally, a Rapid Repairs’ plumber showed up with a new boiler last Friday, Christina Fischer said. In the days since, electricians have done most of the wiring though there is still no heating system for the first floor.

“I don’t understand why a family with disabled children would have had to go through all this insanity in order to get this done when this was the whole kind of point of the program … to help the people who needed it most from the get-go,” she said. “It came to me going there every day, me becoming very threatening for it to get done, and I think that’s really, really unfortunate.”

Holloway, the deputy mayor of operations, and Byrne, of FEMA, acknowledge that there were challenges getting the pilot program up and running, which led to some delays.

Holloway said they switched from a “first-in, first-out” service model to a block-by-block method in order to avoid “wasting half a shift in transport.” They also had to order equipment and set up staging areas for it that were easy for contractors to access.

“There have been a lot of challenges setting this up,” he said, noting it was “unfortunate” some of the people who signed up early “probably have now had to wait longer than really they expected to and more than we would have liked them to.”

Holloway said the work has accelerated as the process has improved, noting that for a recent three-week period crews had worked on 100 homes a day on average. He said the program also is less expensive per household than mobile homes, though he could not say how much money the overall city bill will be.

Despite the problems, Byrne and Holloway both say they believe it could become a model for disaster response.

“I think it will end up being pretty remarkable that families are back in much faster than they might have been under a different model where you might … go rent a place for a year and then come back,” Holloway said. “… That is a terrible option for a homeowner and a family, and it’s terrible for a neighborhood.”

David Abramson, deputy director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said he was initially impressed with the Rapid Repairs’ concept because it addressed some key barriers facing communities when they begin the recovery process, such as having credentialed and trusted contractors.

But he said execution of the program has been spotty.

“I certainly don’t want to throw them under the bus so quickly because they’re having a lot of hiccups in the initial phase,” he said, “(but) they’re clearly having major issues.”  

“I think it falls in the category of good plan, poor implementation,” he added.  

In the suburban New York City counties of Suffolk and Nassau, where the STEP program was announced in mid-November, more than 540 homes had been repaired by Jan. 15, out of some 2,350 households that signed up, according to FEMA.

The STEP program also is operating in two coastal New Jersey communities: Sea Bright, where 115 property owners have signed up, and in Ocean City, where enrollment data was not available.

Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long told NBC News work there is expected to begin in mid-March. A town meeting last week addressed STEP, and she said people were "grateful (for the program), they want to come home." Very few residents have insurance settlements, or they've come in much lower than their losses, leaving many of them in limbo.

“Sandy devastated this little town,” she said. “We lost every business, 75 percent of our homes are not habitable. It’s a ghost town. ... Almost three months later, we are not getting very far. And so something like STEP at least gives us a chance to start moving back to the recovery.”

But some of those in New York City who are just beginning to receive help from Rapid Repairs said they wish they had never waited on it.

Casale, the Breezy Point engineer, had to take a loan from his brother-in-law to help cover repairs he and his wife started on their own.

They’ve done most of the electrical work, but with no heat and water, paint wouldn't dry and they couldn’t get someone to work on their kitchen due to the cold. 

They finally received a hot water heater and a boiler on Jan. 11, but after the installation was finished the boiler began leaking and shorted out the electronic controls on Monday. They’re now waiting for a replacement part to arrive. 

“It was one big fiasco after another,” Katie Casale, 49, a personal assistant at an insurance company, said Tuesday. 

On top of that, Joe Casale found out from Rapid Repairs on Monday that the contractor had already submitted a bill saying the work was complete.

“I’m paying rent and I’m paying a mortgage for three months, so how rapid is rapid?” he said. “It’s not a rapid repair. … We wanted to get back in here.”

Like the Casales, Christina Fischer said her family wishes they hadn't had to rely on the program. 

“Very few of us would have waited for Rapid Repairs if we all had the money to do this, but we don’t,” she said. The program is “a great idea … but winter’s upon us and it’s not done.”  

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BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- This private community, which has fended off previous existential threats, is now facing its “greatest historical challenge” as a result of Superstorm Sandy,  with some residents questioning whether they can afford to rebuild and others wondering if the resurrected beachside community will bear any resemblance to its bucolic former self.

A halting first step on what figures to be a long road back took place Thursday evening, when the Breezy Point Cooperative Inc. Board held its first post-Sandy shareholders meeting at a Catholic high school in Brooklyn.

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More than 1,000 residents of the community founded by Irish immigrants around the turn of the 20^th century packed the meeting, which was closed to the media and members of the general public.

According to residents who attended, the board discussed applications for emergency Small Business Administration loans, the status of efforts to restore various utilities, demolitions and a disaster recovery fund, planned infrastructure improvements and other topics.

But some of those interviewed as they left said that their biggest concerns weren’t addressed.

“In the long run, it seems like things are going to take a lot of time,” said Rob Moran, a 38-year-old construction worker who attended with his wife, Carinne Bach. “A lot of questions are still up in the air right now.”

Bob Esposito, a former police officer whose home sustained water damage, said he was pleased to hear about infrastructure improvements, but wished the board had at least touched on the bigger issues that are weighing on residents’ minds.

 “They were prepared to give a lot of information out, which we all needed to hear, but I think they are very reluctant on answering the hard-core questions,” he said.

Sandy smacked into the village on the southeastern tip of the city’s Rockaway peninsula the night of Oct. 29, unleashing floodwaters that surged through the bungalows and bigger, newer homes, tearing some of the former off their foundations. The flooding also may have sparked a fire that burned down more than 100 of the 2,800 homes in Breezy Point.

The tight-knit community, home to many generations of numerous families, is only beginning to grapple with the wide-ranging consequences. Debris is slowly being cleared and power restored, but the water system is still shut down and demolition of the roughly 200 homes that sustained the worst damage -- including what remains of those in the fire zone -- has yet to begin.

Breezy Point, which was largely self-sufficient before the storm, is receiving assistance from the city as it attempts to jump-start its recovery. But officials and residents acknowledge that they have only begun to regroup.

Cooperative board Chairman Joseph Lynch declined an interview request from NBC News to discuss the current situation, but in an online statement to shareholders posted Nov. 16 he wrote, “This storm and its destruction have presented our Cooperative its greatest historical challenge, which will take time to overcome.” 

In a later message posted just before Thanksgiving, he said that “the economic challenge for some in this regard will be a true test and hardship,” before ending on an optimistic note:

“In spite of this very serious setback I am confident that our Cooperative will also continue to grow, evolve, and prosper as it has over the past fifty-two years,” he said. “We also have no other choice.”

But other community members, including at least one co-op board member, are less sanguine about the prospects of the largely middle-class neighborhood, home to many firefighters, police officers and sanitation workers.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid it may cause some people to leave the community,” said Marty Ingram, fire chief of the Point Breeze volunteer firefighters and a member of the co-op board, though stressing that he was speaking only for himself. “I hope it doesn’t. But it’s going to have an impact.”

Ingram said the community would pull together and he believed would offer some “quiet” financial aid to help people who can’t otherwise afford to rebuild.

Mary Elizabeth Smith, a lifelong resident and author of “A History of Breezy Point,” noted that the community, which started out as more of a summer getaway spot for working-class families and slowly morphed into a charming residential enclave with intimate sand lanes running between homes, has proven remarkably resilient over the years.

The Breezy Point Cooperative was created in 1960 when residents learned that the 800-acres on which their homes stood had been quietly sold to a developer interested in building seaside high-rises. A group of homeowners went door-to-door collecting $500 from each family to raise an initial $75,000 defense fund, she said, and the group was ultimately able to buy back 400 acres for $12 million.

The co-op has been an oasis of economic stability in the decades since, paying off its communal mortgage years ago. That prosperity was in part due to the board’s initial ban on mortgage loans -- a requirement that was eventually relaxed to allow buyers to put 50 percent down on a home and finance the remainder. As a result, Ingram said that not a single Breezy Point home was foreclosed on during the housing crisis that erupted in 2008.

Smith said the credit belongs “to our ancestors … (who) really took a major chance, put up money in a belief in something that did not occur anywhere else in the United States: a community of houses that owned the land underneath them.”

The city briefly considered making Breezy Point a public park in 1962, but protests from residents and the developer scotched that effort. Then, after the National Park Service took title to land to the west and east after the same developer ran into financial problems, the cooperative went to federal court to battle with its new neighbor over ownership of newly formed sand flats, winning the rights to the land in 1982.

“A lot of people who live there today have no idea of the battles that were fought to get this property,” said Smith, 62, who was about 9 when the fight began to save Breezy Point, “and that’s why people really don’t want to leave the place. I’m certainly one of them.”

Moran and Bach are among the residents hoping they can rebuild their bungalow, which may have to be demolished.

The home, which was built by Bach’s deceased father, was inundated by a couple of feet of raw sewage and water, has a slight tilt and apparently some problems with the foundation. Though city inspectors indicated in two initial inspections that they should be able to rebuild, the couple fears it needs more than a repair and they may have to start anew.

With a Dec. 31 deadline set to apply for a free demolition provided by the city, they had hoped to learn at Thursday’s co-op board meeting how the building codes might change as a result of Sandy’s incursion, especially whether rebuilt homes might need to be elevated to lessen the likelihood of future flooding. But they left empty-handed.

“We got a little information, but I’m sure not quite as much as everybody had hoped,” said Bach, 38, a dance and fitness instructor who is several months pregnant. “I don’t think it’s for a lack of trying. I just think there’s so much red tape and so much unknown.”

“As far as where we’re to go from here, there’s not a clear road map,” she added.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hinted on Thursday that building code changes should be expected for waterfront areas, noting that “we can’t just rebuild what was there and hope for the best.”

“As you can see, the yardstick has changed -- and so must we,” he added. “FEMA is currently in the process of updating their (flood) maps -- and those maps will guide us in setting new construction requirements.”

If new, more-stringent building requirements are put in place, many fear the expense will drive out some longtime residents, particularly the elderly and families that have kept summer or part-time homes -- about 40 percent of the residences -- there for decades.

Laurie Cerra is struggling to keep the small green bungalow that had been in her family for about 85 years. She swept the floors, filled garbage bags and struggled to hold back tears last week as volunteers used crowbars to rip down the walls. The home received a red card -- meaning it was unsafe to enter -- from inspectors, but she was doing the work in a bid to save the damaged foundation.

“I’m trying to separate myself from this, I really am. I spent every summer here … growing up. I’m really hoping I can repair the foundation,” said Cerra, 54, a dietitian from Greenfield Township, Pa.

But because she can’t get coverage from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which doesn’t provide emergency aid on second homes, and has not heard from her homeowners' insurance for wind damage coverage in three weeks, she can’t afford to rebuild in the short term.

“Maybe in, I don’t know, three or four years, if I get (the) foundation, then I can do it myself. I can try and do sheetrock myself,” she said. “At this point, no, it’s just going to be out of my savings account to rebuild.”

The co-op board is implicitly acknowledging the financial threat. In a statement posted online on Saturday, it said Breezy Point homeowners can now borrow, over the next two years, up to 80 percent of their home’s appraised value, or up to $500,000, to repair or replace their properties.

It also waived one part of the “carrying charges” -- monthly fees that include garbage collection, road and building maintenance, property tax and security services -- for the owners of about 300 homes that were destroyed or significantly damaged.

Lynch, the co-op board chairman, had upset some residents by reminding them that it is “really important” that shareholders continue to pay the fees “as our corporation will face real financial challenges and pressure in the immediate future.”

Lifelong resident Kim Dillon was among those who felt the tone was wrong so soon after the disaster.

“Our lives are in disarray and I don’t think their first contact with us should have been … ‘we’re still expecting maintenance fees’ when there’s people that don’t have houses,” said Dillon, 43, whose family is one of two that have moved back onto their block, even though there is still no running water.

But Dillon said her neighbors, who were like family, would be back, though she acknowledged her hometown would change as a result of the devastation.

“It’s going to be sad to see the bungalows gone, because that was like old Breezy Point,” she said, referring to the area known as “the wedge,” where the six-alarm fire burned so hot that stormy night. “I don’t think there’s going to be many -- if any -- left.” 

Follow this link to view the panoramic of Breezy Point full-screen.

 

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The roller coaster that was swept right-side up into the Atlantic Ocean as Hurricane Sandy slammed the Jersey Shore may not be torn down, according to Seaside Heights Mayor Bill Akers. 

The picture of the ride, which looks more like a water slide these days, has become an iconic image of the damage Sandy  wreaked up and down the coast just over three weeks ago. 

But Mayor Akers, in an exclusive interview with NBC 4 New York, said he is working with the Coast Guard to see if it is stable enough to leave it alone.  

If it is, Akers said it would make "a great tourist attraction."

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Meanwhile, demolition crews have already finished removing all of the damaged boardwalk that was the heart and soul of this seaside resort.

Businessmen like Mike Mergott of Mad Mike's Amusements said he is rebuilding because he is "one hundred per cent sure" families want to come back.

And Jim Loundy, who owned several buildings wiped away by the surge is confident he won't see another storm like this for "another fifty or sixty years."

Mayor Akers said construction on a new boardwalk should begin in January, and be ready by Memorial Day. 

 

The average New Jersey beach is 30 to 40 feet narrower after Superstorm Sandy, according to a survey that is sure to intensify a long-running debate on whether federal dollars should be used to replenish stretches of sand that only a fraction of U.S. taxpayers use.

Some of New Jersey's famous beaches lost half their sand when Sandy slammed ashore in late October.

The shore town of Mantoloking, one of the hardest-hit communities, lost 150 feet of beach, said Stewart Farrell, director of Stockton College's Coastal Research Center and a leading expert on beach erosion.

Routine storms tear up beaches in any season, and one prescription for protecting communities from storm surge has been to replenish beaches with sand pumped from offshore. Places with recently beefed-up beaches saw comparatively little damage, said Farrell, whose study's findings were made available to The Associated Press.

"It really, really works," Farrell said. "Where there was a federal beach fill in place, there was no major damage — no homes destroyed, no sand piles in the streets. Where there was no beach fill, water broke through the dunes."

The beach-replenishment projects have been controversial both for their expense and because waves continually wash away the new sand. The federal government picks up 65 percent of the cost, with the rest coming from state and local coffers.

How big the beaches are — or whether there is a beach at all to go to — is a crucial question that must be resolved before the summer tourism season. The Jersey shore powers the state's $35.5 billion tourism industry.

But the pending spending showdown between congressional Republicans and Democrats could make it even harder to secure hundreds of millions of additional dollars for beach replenishment.

From 1986 to 2011, nearly $700 million was spent placing 80 million cubic yards of sand on about 55 percent of the New Jersey coast. Over that time, the average beach gained 4 feet of width, according to the Coastal Research Center. And just before the storm hit, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded nearly $28 million worth of contracts for new replenishment projects in southern New Jersey's Cape May County.

 

---

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, used a photo of a pig on the cover of his 2009 report "Washed Out To Sea," in which he characterized beach replenishment as costly, wasteful pork that the nation could not afford.

"Taxpayers are not surprised when they learn how Congress wastes billions of dollars on questionable programs and projects each year, but it may still shock taxpayers to know that Congress has literally dumped nearly $3 billion into beach projects that have washed out to sea," he wrote.

A message seeking comment was left Monday with Coburn's office.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, predicted lawmakers from New Jersey and New York would be able to get additional shore protection funds included in the next federal budget, despite partisan wars.

"I think we will be able to make the case," he said. "We can show that this provides long-term protection to property and lives. You can either pay up front to keep on top of projects like this, or you can pay on the back end" through disaster recovery funds.

Menendez this week noted that Congress has approved emergency recovery funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina and tornadoes in Missouri, among other natural disasters.

During a tour of storm-wrecked neighborhoods in Seaside Heights and Hoboken, Vice President Joe Biden also vowed the federal government would pay to rebuild New Jersey.

"This is a national responsibility; this is not a local responsibility," Biden said. "We're one national government, and we have an obligation."

Jogging in the street because Sandy had destroyed the Spring Lake boardwalk for the second time in little over a year, Michele Degnan-Spang said it was difficult to comprehend how things have changed in her community.

A few stray planks of the synthetic gray boardwalk that was just replaced last year after Tropical Storm Irene were strewn about the sand; concrete pilings that used to support the boardwalk now stretch for a mile off to the horizon like little Stonehenges.

"It's horrible," she said. "It's draining to see this. It's surreal. I'm walking through it and saying, 'This really is happening.'"

Degnan-Spang predicted she and her extended family would be back on the sand soon, though.

"The drive is going to be to get back on the beach next summer, no matter what it looks like," she said. "We don't go on vacation because we live in the most beautiful spot in the world. We all go to the beach; it's what summer is. It'll come back; it'll just be different."

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When some residents in New York's Westchester County called utility Consolidated Edison on Friday to find out why it was taking so long to restore power, they were told that it wasn't for lack of manpower or equipment.

It was poles ... utility poles.

Despite the caravans of power trucks in neighborhoods across the New York City area, a shortage of the specially-treated wooden poles used to string overhead power transmission lines and hold up transformers may be slowing the recovery.

Specialty pole suppliers like Cox Industries and Bridgewell Resources are producing and trucking as many as 1,500 poles a day to customers in the Northeast since Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline on Monday, flooding entire towns and leaving millions of homes in the dark. More than 3.5 million people remained without power as of Friday afternoon.

---

But in some cases suppliers say they cannot keep up. Class 1 and 2 utility poles, which are the largest in diameter and among the most commonly used in the Northeast, sold out fast and the orders are still coming, said Chris Slonaker, an East Coast sales manager for Bridgewell, which is based in Tigard, Ore.

"The stock that was available at the time of the storm is all gone, and we are trying to replenish it," said Slonaker, whose company supplies power poles to Consolidated Edison, Public Service Enterprise Group, Verizon Communications and several rural electric cooperatives.

ConEd, which still had about 500,000 customers without power as of Friday afternoon, would not immediately comment on why its customer service personnel had told some homeowners that utility pole supplies were a challenge. A spokeswoman said the biggest obstacles to restoring power to customers with overhead lines was impassable roads and thousands of downed power lines.

To complicate matters, because of high demand, stockpiles of the southern pine trees used to make the poles are in short supply at plants Bridgewell buys from. Trees are arriving at plants daily and several thousand poles are under construction now, Slonaker said.

They should be ready to ship to the Northeast by the middle of next week for a 900-mile trip that takes two to three days -- which could mean another week or more -- without electricity and heat even as a cold snap settles into the area.

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Most of the dozen or so plants Bridgewell buys utility poles from have been operating 24-hours a day since the storm. They usually operate only 8-hours a day during normal weather and 16-hours a day after most big weather events. Typically, Bridgewell ships 50 truckloads, each with about 30 poles, each day for one or two days after a storm. But Hurricane Sandy has led to an influx of orders far larger.

"Orders have continued at this pace" every day since Sandy struck on Monday, Slonaker said.

And even after producing the poles, Bridgewell is finding there are more orders than there were trucks. Hundreds of flatbed trucks that would normally deliver plywood and other supplies are being outfitted with wooden stakes so they can haul the 35-to-50-foot utility poles.

Orangeburg, South Carolina-based Cox Industries is sending upwards of 1,200 poles per day to warehouses in Hainesport, N.J., and Hicksville, N.Y., on Long Island from its production factories in the Southeast, said Don Surrency, a sales manager at the company.

Surrency said Cox has not had trouble keeping up with orders to PSE&G, Long Island Power Authority or Verizon and is sending about 40 trucks per day, each loaded with 25 to 30 poles. But getting them to the right place hasn't been easy.

"There are other obstacles you don't typically see in storms," said Surrency.

Among them: The dense population, blocked or difficult to pass roadways -- sometimes because of cars that have simply run out of gas, he said.

Truck drivers have, so far, not encountered the fuel shortages many residents in New York and New Jersey have experienced, Surrency and Slonaker said.

John Margaritis, a spokesman for PSE&G, the biggest power provider in New Jersey, said that supply of utility poles has not been an issue. The utility in hard-hit New Jersey still had 692,000 customers without power as of Friday afternoon.

LIPA did not return calls and emails for comment on Friday.

Before the storm, most of the utilities Bridgewell deals with had already ordered extra supplies of poles. But Slonaker says those ran out quickly.

"They were prepared, but this was bigger than expected," he said. "It's hard to prepare for this."

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NEW YORK -- Last summer it was packed with beachgoers, a parking lot where New Yorkers stashed their cars, applied sunscreen and dragged lawn chairs, coolers and umbrellas across the blacktop toward the shore.

Today it's an enormous waste collection site half a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, piled high with debris from the flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy.

Though the flow of debris has slowed a little, the cleanup job is far from over.

New York City officials have determined that around 350 homes in the city are beyond salvation, including 80 in Breezy Point alone, said Fred Strickland, the resident engineer from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is helping the New York Department of Sanitation with the cleanup.

If all goes according to plan, the city will condemn the houses and demolish them, and Strickland's team will help haul away the rubble.

---

Twisted steel, waterlogged wood, broken furniture and countless mattresses already fill the parking lot that normally serves one of New York's most popular ocean beaches.

Hundreds of trucks come and go around the clock bringing material collected from the streets of the Far Rockaways and Breezy Point, where water from Sandy's storm surge tore apart homes and buildings. Residents are still digging out.

The temporary garbage dump at Jacob Riis Park in Queens is one of several sites around the city being used this way. The size of the dump reflects the enormity of the damage caused by the storm. The debris just keeps coming.

"Our mission is to clear the right of way -- sidewalk to sidewalk," said Strickland.

Strickland said his collectors are making constant rounds of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, going back for more debris as homeowners clean out flood-damaged homes.

Strickland expects his assignment, paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to take four months.

"I'll probably get to see the ball drop in Times Square this year," said Strickland, who is from California.

Strickland works out of a high-tech trailer parked on the edge of the dump. Inside are maps of the New York area, tasks and reminders scribbled onto whiteboards, and several computers. He says by Saturday he expects to have a thousand vehicles and roughly four thousand people working on the cleanup.

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The debris hauled to the site by the Army Corps is being combed over by workers for the Environmental Protection Agency, then trucked over to Staten Island, put on a barge and floated up the Hudson river to a landfill near Albany.

At the site, the EPA workers don full-body suits and gas masks and then scramble through the piles of debris to pick out hazardous materials like aerosol cans and electrical appliances.

Other EPA workers test the air for a range of hazards including bacteria, viruses and fungal agents, hazardous fumes, and lead paint. Workers on the site are drawing on experiences from Hurricane Katrina and the devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Mo., over a year ago.

The Army Corps said it has hauled 4,500 tons to Jacob Riis already; the sanitation department, which is also using the site, said it has cycled through ten times that amount.

Instead of sending debris upstate via barge, the sanitation department has been moving it to landfills out of state, including one in Pennsylvania. Citywide, the department said it has collected a quarter of a million tons of debris.

"It's historic, the amount of tonnage," said Joe Hickey, assistant sanitation chief at the department. He added that if the debris piles were to be lined up end to end they would stretch for two miles.

Once the debris is gone, Hickey said the sanitation department will bring in street sweepers and other machines to scrub away the last traces of the dump.

"When the Department of Sanitation gets done with this, if you didn't know already that this is used the way it's been used, you would never know," he said.

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NEW YORK – The city is embarking on an unprecedented reconstruction program to swiftly repair homes damaged by Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday. The program will be mostly paid for by the federal government and aims to get some people home early next week, he said.

The program, called New York City Rapid Repair, will deploy general contractors who will oversee the work in the hard-hit areas. Those contractors will manage electricians, plumbers, carpenters and others to complete the repairs, Bloomberg said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is supporting the project and will pay for most if not all of it, he added.

“For a homeowner to go off on their own and find somebody who was available and willing to show up is a daunting task,” he said at a news conference. “We’re changing the game. Today, we’re launching a program that will start returning people to their homes as early as next week. … Its goal is to get as many New Yorkers as possible back in their homes by the end of the year.”

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Some 90,000 households in New York City and Long Island remained without power Friday. Some homes need simple repairs to get up and running, while others will need major work.

The program will begin with the easiest houses to fix, with those that have received a green card -- indicating they are sound -- from the buildings department, Bloomberg said. The buildings department has already examined some 80,000 homes.

To register, people must either visit one of the city’s restoration centers, call the information line (311) or sign up online. They must call FEMA to get an identification number. Bloomberg said. The first wave of applicants must have received a green card and be on a street where power has been restored.

Signup begins Tuesday. Work will start soon afterward.

Bloomberg said the program, which is optional, was unprecedented and “will save the city, state and federal government a lot of money and that’s because contractors will be able to work on multiple buildings at once and not just one house at a time.”

Contractors will work over the weekend with the buildings department to identify the homes that will be in the first wave of repairs.

The program “will go a long ways in our recovery, but I will say it won’t fix everything,” Bloomberg said. “In the hardest hit places like Breezy Point, homes were completely destroyed and some of the buildings that are standing will need major structural work before they can be lived in again. For those families, we’re working on housing options that we’ll have more to say about next week.”

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