The shores lining the Seagate community in Brooklyn was piled in ruins more than three weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, Nov. 18, 2012. (Photo by Chavie Lieber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Among his losses are countless pieces of precious memorabilia\u00a0accumulated over the course of a nearly 50-year music career: his\u00a0priceless collection of vintage guitars, a slot machine from the 1900s\u00a0valued at $20,000 and a lamp that belonged to the late New Mexico\u00a0artist Tony Price. Not the least of his worries, Vance is now homeless and living at a hotel on\u00a0Staten Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just no way to get these things replaced, and I just redid my\u00a0kitchen and bathrooms,\u201d Vance said. \u201cMy grandkids would come stay here\u00a0with me every summer; I\u2019ve lost all that. And my feral cat I lived\u00a0with for over fours years, she\u2019s gone, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some three weeks after Sandy washed ashore, power has been largely\u00a0restored in the tristate area of New York, New\u00a0Jersey and Connecticut and, for most people, life has\u00a0gradually returned to normal. But for some, normal has been forever\u00a0redefined.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe history of our temple is now just moldering pulp,\u201d said Amy\u00a0Cargman, president of the West End Temple in Neponsit, a neighborhood\u00a0just west of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was completely decimated,\u201d Cargman said. \u201cWe took the\u00a0Torahs out, fortunately, but everything from prayer books to pews to the rabbi\u2019s personal library is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents of Belle Harbor and Neponsit, both affluent areas, perhaps were better equipped than most to weather a catastrophic weather event.\u00a0They had cars and cash and cruise ship evacuation routes — unlike many of their neighbors in the Rockaways and nearby Brooklyn and Staten Island. But even with\u00a0comparatively deep pockets and up-to-date insurance payments, few will ever fully restore their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if I fix my home, our banks, our schools, our gyms, our temples,\u00a0our restaurants are all gone,\u201d said Laurie Musumeci, a 56-year-old real estate agent who lives near Vance and also is a\u00a0member of the West End Temple. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like home. I\u2019m right on the ocean but it\u2019s hard for me to look at it right now. I can\u2019t believe something I\u2019ve loved my whole life did this to\u00a0us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musumeci’s family lost the five cars that were in her driveway when the storm hit as well as the basement of her home, which her grandfather built\u00a0in 1939 and had served as her office and her son’s\u00a0apartment. Musumeci estimates she needs $64,000 for repairs — the $2,700 she’s received so far from the Federal Emergency\u00a0Management Agency is \u201ca joke,\u201d she says \u2013 and has had to tap into\u00a0savings set aside for her daughter’s college tuition.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur insurance will only cover things they say is expected in the\u00a0basement, like our boiler and heat system,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything else is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the Northeast, residents had more immediate concerns than inadequate insurance payouts and lost guitars. In Atlantic City, which produced some of the most dramatic images of the storm’s devastation, some 6,000 homes were estimated to have been severely damaged and more than 600 people were made homeless.<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, city shelters are closed, and in a city that already had a homeless population of about 3,000, other agencies are stepping in to fill the void.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re providing 150 families a day basic necessities of clothing, supplies, food,\u201d said Beth Joseph of Jewish Family Services of Atlantic and Cape May counties. \u201cMany people’s houses were flooded with their electrical systems and furnaces destroyed, so you’re looking at hundreds of people displaced. Also, tons of businesses were ruined and it might be a year before they are opened, so we need to account for the unemployed who can no longer support themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joseph’s organization has raised more than $50,000 to provide temporary housing for families ineligible for federal assistance, a sum that hardly scratches the surface of what is needed. And the situation is likely to get worse once FEMA pulls out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s still so much to do, and the money we’ve raised so far will not be enough,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Millions of dollars have been raised by Jewish organizations and countless volunteer efforts have been mobilized. UJA-Federation of New York has allocated some $10 million for relief in eight counties, including the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester and Long Island. The federation, the country’s largest, raised an additional $2.5 million through its website.<\/p>\n
So far, $3.2 million has been disbursed to beneficiary agencies to provide food, water, shelter and other necessities, but the organization is beginning to look ahead as well — to permanent housing, trauma treatment, and services for the poor and elderly who don’t have insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though it’s a few weeks after the storm, the basic needs are not going to go away so fast,\u201d said Alice Blass of the the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, which has raised $54,000 for storm relief, about half of which has been disbursed to agencies.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella group of all the local federations, has raised about $3 million for hurricane relief — about $2.2 million from other federations and the rest from its own coffers. About $250,000 was allocated to New York and $350,000 to federations in New Jersey and Rockland County, north of New York City.<\/p>\n
That’s not counting dozens of smaller volunteer efforts that have drawn support from across the Jewish community. More than 60 carloads of supplies were donated by area synagogues to coastal New Jersey communities. And a synagogue in Baltimore bused hundreds of volunteers to the heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood of Seagate, which even now still has the feel of a disaster zone.<\/p>\n
The Jewish volunteer patrol group Shomrim setting up a relief unit at the center of the Seagate community of Brooklyn handing out hot food, drinks and supplies. (Photo by Chavie Lieber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, volunteers wearing boots and masks filled the streets. Kids worked on assembly lines to help rip out the basements of homes and teenagers weaved through the narrow streets on ATVs handing out cleaning supplies. Shomrim, the Jewish neighborhood watch group, had set up a command unit and was handing out hot food and drinks. Along the beach, gaping holes in waterfront homes offered a peek at what was lost inside. Broken china, pieces of detached roofing, and scattered electronics littered the beach and sidewalks.<\/p>\n
Pinny Dembitzer of the Seagate Association, standing on the Brooklyn community's shore, noting the long road of cleanup that lies ahead for the community, (Photo by Chavie Lieber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Pinny Dembitzer, the president of the Seagate Homeowners Association, put on a brave face as he helped organize the cleanup, directing ambulances, food trucks and cleaning supplies to the proper destinations while answering three cell phones. Dembitzer hopes the neighborhood will come back stronger than ever. But surrounded by ruination and confronting untold rebuilding costs, that future seemed perilously hard to imagine.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody here was spared,\u201d Dembitzer said. \u201cEvery single house you\u2019re looking at had damage, and it will take millions to see repairs. I\u2019ve been here 30 years, and I\u2019ve never had a flood. Ninety-five percent of the people here don\u2019t have insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Seagate-ruins.jpg\" "\\"Seagate")