Hurricane Sandy 10th anniversary: The Memory Remains

Queens Chronicle

On the night of Oct. 29, 2012 when Superstorm Sandy hit, Angela and Jon Rosen watched as the water crept up their front door steps, nearing the first floor of the house they had bought on 97th Street in Howard Beach only about a year earlier.

They heard the basement windows burst, letting in nearly 8 and a half feet of water.

Their three sons, 6-year-old twins and a 10-year-old, were on the second floor, distracted by their devices until the batteries died. All of their toys and books would be destroyed as well as their parents’ wedding album, family photos and Angela’s high school yearbook and book collections. The only thing that survived in the basement was her grandparents’ china.

Angela had taken bread, canned foods and cereal upstairs and her husband took a sledgehammer in case they had to bust through the roof, images of Hurricane Katrina victims running through their heads.

But Angela had seen that high tide was supposed to end at 8:35 p.m. so she kept her eyes on her watch, then the water, then the watch, then the water.

“If we can get past 8:35, then we can get through this,” she said.

And get through it, they did. It was not about strength but survival, she said. Despite assistance from FEMA and eventually the Red Cross, the real relief, she said, came from neighbors. Some days, she was their shoulder to cry on and other days she needed theirs.

It took a while, but one of her twins no longer panics at the sound of running water.

“It makes you appreciate what you have, what is important,” said Rosen. “My kids were safe, we were safe ... the rest of it is just stuff. It cost me a boatload of damn money, but in the end, it’s really all just stuff. We made it through and we realized that people could be really wonderful.”

Across Hawtree Basin, Roger Gendron had just become president of the New Hamilton Beach Civic Association.

“I didn’t even know what it meant to be a civic president yet, but I had to figure it out,” said Gendron, whose whole first floor had to be gutted from the flooding that ravaged it and the basement, which he and his then-teenage son waded through up to their chests.

The morning after Sandy, Gendron’s neighbor was pounding on his door at 5 a.m. warning him that he had a gas leak in his house due to the foundation giving way.

In a matter of days, Gendron and his wife, Holly, were helping to run a relief center out of the nearby firehouse, making vats of coffee to give out to neighbors and helping to charge their phones. He recalled the outpouring of support from all over.

“The floodgates had opened,” Gendron said, as help came in from the Kiwanis Club of Glendale, Resorts World Casino, a couple from Connecticut, the Tzu Chi Foundation, which distributed gift cards for hundreds of dollars to victims, and more. The Gendrons postponed their Thanksgiving dinner to the weekend to distribute food on the day of to neighbors.

“If there’s one thing out of Sandy that’s important — we all hear resiliency, a resilient community — people shared what they had. They helped each other. From day one,” said Community Board 10 Chair Betty Braton.

In Broad Channel, Dan Mundy Jr., president of the Broad Channel Civic Association, was operating one of the very first relief centers in the area, which opened up at the American Legion Hall.

“You sit down. You get a good meal, a drink. You have a laugh. You start to come back down and then it’s like, ‘What do you need?’ Well, I need toiletries, diapers, whatever. The whole place was filled to almost the ceiling,” said Mundy. “So that went on for like three weeks. It was absolutely amazing.”

Gendron recalled turning to state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach), who he said talked him off the ledge several times.

“He told me I was thinking about the next six days and next six months but what I had to do was focus on the next six hours,” Gendron recalled.

It was a stressful time for so many, Addabbo said. “I never had men in my district crying, literally, on my shoulder ... I had never seen these strong Howard Beach men cry before.”

Addabbo’s home in Ozone Park had a tree fall just 4 feet from his front door but in that town, Sandy was merely a heavy rainstorm.

“You go south, and it’s devastation ... you hit Howard Beach and the homes have basically been emptied onto the curb. Then you go further south to Broad Channel and there are boats in the middle of Cross Bay Boulevard. Then you go down to Rockaway and there’s a section of the boardwalk with a rail still attached blocks away from the beach. And then, of course, fires and devastation in Breezy.”

Addabbo was in the middle of a tight Senate race against Eric Ulrich, who was in the City Council at the time. Addabbo’s district had been redrawn and polls were showing the two within percentage points of each other but he had to suspend his campaign in the south of his district.

“I said, ‘We’re done. These people, some lost their lives. They lost their businesses. They lost their homes. We’re done. Do not ring a bell. Do not do anything south of Ozone Park,’” he told his team.