Confusion, Anger While Still Rebuilding After Sandy
By Catherine Galioto
OCEAN COUNTY – Three years since the storm surge of Superstorm Sandy sent houses careening off foundations and into each other, and collapsed a rollercoaster into the ocean, some of the dramatic symbols of damage have been demolished, rebuilt or boarded up.
The months and now years that followed the October 2012 storm turned from emergency rescues in the hours after the storm, to months of debris clean-up, to years of remediation and rebuilding for thousands of homes.
FEMA estimated that 37,000 primary residences were destroyed or damaged in New Jersey, where 8.7 million cubic yards of debris were left behind and 2.7 million New Jerseyans were without power.
Drive through several impacted neighborhoods of Ortley Beach, Good Luck Point, Beach Haven West, Normandy Beach, East Dover and more, and you’ll still hear the bang and whirr of hammers and saws and the beep of construction vehicles ‑‑ the sounds of rebuilding, three years later.
Attend a local government meeting, and you’ll hear residents who are still looking for answers: when will the dunes be rebuilt, what will you do to prevent destruction from the next Sandy. You’ll hear officials debating a new ordinance how to compel an absent or bank-owned property owner of a Sandy-damaged home to fix the hole in their roof or remove debris.
This month, the debate was on Coastal A Zones, and newly changed requirements on elevating homes that are in the zone as part of the FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps. The changes means a homeowner who planned to raise their home one elevation may have to return to the drawing board and make another plan for a new elevation.
“These regulations are now going to put several of our homeowners in a previous position,” Berkeley Mayor Carmen F. Amato Jr. said. “So many have not even moved back since Superstorm Sandy. To impose these harsh restrictions is unfair.”
In Berkeley, which saw severe damage along its mainland bayfront and barrier island sections, has about 400 homes in the new Coastal A zone.
Berkeley Council passed a resolution requesting a rollback in regulations for Coastal A zone. Toms River did the same, where about 2,000 homes are in the zone, officials there said.
Toms River Councilman George Wittmann, who asked Toms River pass its resolution in opposition of the new guidelines, said “This will have a deleterious effect on those homeowners, such as the bay area homes.” It could mean the difference between a concrete foundation, and building on pilings or elevated piers, he said. “You have homes built on one standard and now another.”
Wittmann said he feared homeowners would simply find it cheaper to demolish their home than try to save and elevate structures in place for generations.
“And you could see residents that have lived in their home for a long time having to sell their property because they can’t afford to raise their home,” Wittmann said.
There is a six-month grace period before the new rules are phased in, until March 21, 2016.
Local officials hope the new rules don’t survive.
They are “a hardship on people who have already rebuilt,” said Berkeley Councilman James Byrnes, himself one of several local officials who saw Sandy damage.
The divide between homeowners who were immediately able to rebuild and those who still haven’t will be measured in height, and also in the additional dollars spent to reach new elevation.
“Those who have already started the rebuilding process will not be held to these standards, so you’ll have half rebuilt to the old standards and the ones who have not are under these more stringent regulations,” Amato said. “This is clearly unfair to the homeowners.”
At this stage, there’s fewer grants to help rebuild.
“The grant avenues have been closed, and they’ve exhausted their insurance money. So where is this going to come from?” Byrnes asked.
“They are changing the rules, midstream,” Amato said, adding that the rules are now more stringent and in keeping with the V Zone elevation requirements in that floodzone.
Significantly damaged homes, and lost businesses, removed from the tax rolls for the last three years, are coming back. In Toms River, the ratable base is seeing about 50 percent recovery to pre-Sandy levels, Toms River Township Administrator Paul Shives said.
“We said it would be about 3 to 5 years before we would get it all back, and we’re about three years and just about half, so we are where we thought we would be,” Shives said as the 2015 budget passed.
Toms River lost $2 billion in ratables and has recovered about $1.1 billion as of July.
Just before the one-year anniversary of Sandy, FEMA bullet pointed its efforts across the states impacted by the storm: total federal assistance was $5.5 billion at that point; 261,883 people contacted FEMA for help or information and 126,905 housing inspections completed. That was through August 2013, across the entire storm area.
As of September 28 of this year: $1.4 billion went toward individual assistance, to disaster survivors; $11.4 billion in government aid; and $770 million in hazard mitigation grants. That’s for New Jersey and New York combined.
Extraordinary aid to towns to help fill the gaps in their budget created by destroyed tax base, or to help pay for cleanup, have run out. Still, towns are awaiting for reimbursements from FEMA for the costs it faced, and it’s impacting tax rates.
“We’re still in the process of trying to get reimbursed for a large portion of those costs,” Barnegat Mayor Susan McCabe said in September. “We’ve noticed that FEMA has struggled a bit to keep up with the requests, and recently added several new steps which have to be completed.”
In all, the Barnegat Township is still waiting on about $2 million in reimbursements from FEMA for storm recovery costs.
After multiple marches both in Trenton and in places such as Ortley Beach, labeled “Ground Zero” of Sandy damage, the group Stop FEMA Now will spend the third anniversary of Sandy camped out outside the capital.
The “Sandy Memorial Wall” will take place October 27 to 30, with three actual pieces of the memorial wall to visually represent a house in those three stages: wrecked by Sandy, half-done, and finished.
Participants are urged to bring photos, mementos or letters, and “spend a night with us in Trenton at our camp to demonstrate the thousands of families that still aren’t home on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Families that are still displaced, and other Sandy survivors will be staying at our camp, in a parking lot directly behind the World War Two Memorial to call attention to the thousands of families that still aren’t home. We’ll be staying in RVs and tents,” wrote Stop FEMA Now to its supporters and media.
For our archives of Superstorm Sandy coverage, visit micromediapubs.com.
