A year after Sandy, areas hit by storm lit up shore

A couple walk along Rockaway Beach on the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy yesterday in the Queens borough of New York City. Many residents of the Rockaways and neighbouring Breezy Point are reflecting on the progress made over the past year while acknowledging the problems were still evident.

Reuters

New York

Residents of a dozen New Jersey shore cities lit up the coast with flashlights to mark Superstorm Sandy’s anniversary yesterday, while recovering from the hurricane that ravaged the east coast and left 159 people dead.

Many shore residents in storm-hit states, including New York and Connecticut, are still coping with damaged homes and waiting for $48bn in federal aid pledged for rebuilding. The rare, late-season tropical storm damaged more than 650,000 homes, prompting evacuations and closing businesses for weeks.

Sandy hit with almost hurricane strength winds and extended over a massive 1,000 miles (1,600km), causing a storm surge that flooded downtown Manhattan and long stretches of the New Jersey shore, leaving millions in the dark, some for weeks.

The floodwaters breached New York City’s subway system, which was partially out of commission for much of the following week, and left many area residents struggling for weeks to find adequate supplies of gasoline, as power outages left homes dark and cold and filling stations closed.

Federal officials on Monday unveiled plans to release a second $5bn round of funding from the Sandy relief fund, for New York State and City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and Rhode Island. The money is aimed at rebuilding and repairing homes damaged by the storm.

US Senator Chuck Schumer said the relief money has been slow to come so far - less that a quarter of the $48bn authorised had been allocated by the end of August but said the flow of funds would pick up.

“The spigot is now open,” Schumer told a press conference on Monday.

Congress initially authorised $50bn for Sandy recovery, but the automatic spending cuts that kicked in earlier this year reduced that target to about $47.9bn.

Private money has also flowed into communities. Bloomberg’s Mayors Fund for emergency response said on Monday it had received more than $60mn in contributions to a fund to help cover restoration.

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell was to launch a $100mn competitive grant programme, funded by the non-profit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to help restore coastal habitats and bolster natural systems, to allow these areas to better protect local communities from future storms.

Sandy also prompted local officials to rethink storm preparedness. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in June proposed a $20bn plan to prepare the city to better handle future storms, with measures ranging from new flood walls to building up beaches, which can be natural barriers.

While this year’s Atlantic hurricane season has been the quietest in 45 years, with only two storms reaching hurricane strength, regional leaders said shore communities need to remain ready for similar high-powered storms.

“Our weather patterns are in fact changing,” Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy told reporters on Monday. “We’re seeing more severe weather occurrences, closer together and we need to prepare for that. We need to do everything we can to help our citizenry prepare for that.”