New Documentary Follows A Community's Struggle After Hurricane Sandy

The short “Beach 119” focuses on the residents of one street in the Rockways as they fight to survive after their community is flooded and left without power, gasoline, water, or heat, for weeks after the storm. Watch the official trailer for Beach 119. 

 

Chris Christie On Sandy Aid: House Republicans Were 'Disappointing And Disgusting To Watch'

(CNN) -- The promise of $60 billion can do a lot to calm outrage.

That point was underscored Wednesday, when House leaders met with irate representatives from New York and New Jersey who felt they had been ignored by House Speaker John Boehner, when he scrapped a planned vote late Tuesday on the massive package to aid package for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

"We're getting what New York and New Jersey need, and that's all that counts," Rep. Peter King, R-New York, told reporters after emerging from a 20-minute meeting with Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. "We're all big boys; we understand that all that counts is the bottom line."

A vote on $9 billion on immediate aid is set for Friday, with the balance of $51 billion due for consideration January 15.

In a statement, Boehner and Cantor said "critical aid" to storm victims should be the first priority of the new Congress, which convenes Thursday.

The comity contrasted sharply with the outrage that exploded earlier in the day over Congress' inaction on the package, pitting even fellow Republicans against Boehner.

It was "disappointing and disgusting to watch," said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, blaming "the toxic internal politics of the House majority."

"New Jersey deserves better than the duplicity we saw on display," he said, adding, "shame on Congress."

Christie, a Republican, said he had tried to reach Boehner on Tuesday night after the latter surprised many by canceling a vote on the aid bill, which was already approved by the Senate. "He did not take my calls," said Christie.

In a news conference, Christie said he joined people of his state in feeling "betrayed," and added that the move summarize "why the American people hate Congress."

In a statement, Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote, "This failure to come to the aid of Americans following a severe and devastating natural disaster is unprecedented. The fact that days continue to go by while people suffer, families are out of their homes, and men and women remain jobless and struggling during these harsh winter months is a dereliction of duty. "

Boehner did not make public remarks, and did not post about the issue on social media.

But civility was restored late in the afternoon. "As far as I'm concerned, that was a lifetime ago," King said. "I know it was last night, but the bottom line is we're going forward getting what we believe is necessary."

Earlier, King had slammed his own party. "The Republican Party has said it's the party of 'family values.' Last night, it turned its back on the most essential value of all, and that's to provide food, shelter, clothing and relief for people who have been hit by a natural disaster," King told CNN.

King told CNN he chased Boehner "all over the House last night" and that Boehner had said everything would be taken care of after the vote on the fiscal cliff. But Boehner left.

King called the House leadership's move a "knife in the back."

"Anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined," King said. It's very rare for a lawmaker to call on anyone not to support his own party.

A senior GOP leadership aide said Boehner will make a Sandy aid package "his first priority in the new Congress," which begins its term Thursday.

When a new Congress begins, both chambers have to begin from scratch with legislation, so the Senate's passage of a previous bill will be moot.

Michael Steel, Boehner's spokesman, said the speaker is "committed to getting this bill passed this month."

The House adjourned shortly after 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, and plans to return at 11 a.m. Thursday -- an hour before the new Congress begins.

"It seems an even sadder commentary on the state of our Congress than we've observed to date," said Paul Lurrie, who lives in Belle Harbor, New York, and had no heat or electricity for three weeks after the storm struck.

He accused Boehner of "petulance" for not bringing the package to a vote as expected.

Before the House adjourned Wednesday, President Barack Obama urged a vote.

"It has only been two months since Hurricane Sandy devastated communities across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut as well as other Eastern states. Our citizens are still trying to put their lives back together," Obama said in a statement.

"When tragedy strikes, Americans come together to support those in need. I urge Republicans in the House of Representatives to do the same, bring this important request to a vote today, and pass it without delay for our fellow Americans," Obama said.

Some of the harshest comments came from King.

In stricken region, 'the money was needed yesterday'

King, speaking to CNN, had warned of political repercussions for his party. "There are a number of Republicans who maybe can kiss their seat goodbye ... because of what was done to them," he said, referring to GOP lawmakers in the region stricken by Sandy. "If you can't provide the most basic assistance for your district, who needs you in Congress?"

Scott Mandel, vice president of New York's Long Beach City Council, told CNN, "The money was needed yesterday and the fact that there's an obstacle in the way for whatever reason and a vote wasn't allowed to go forward was inexcusable."

The money would improve the city's ability to withstand damage from winter storms, Mandel said.

Carlo Scissura, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, said hundreds of businesses that have been unable to reopen are waiting for federal grants.

"I would love to give the speaker and the majority leader... a tour of these devastated areas then have them tell me we shouldn't be getting the money," Scissura said.

Fiscal cliff battle held up the measure

The tumultuous process of getting the fiscal cliff deal passed in the House held up the relief measure, and many conservative House Republicans opposed the size of the Senate bill.

"Leadership was all-consumed with the cliff procedure," Rogers told reporters off the House floor late Tuesday. "And they really have not had the time to devote to this because of that."

Sandy killed at least 113 people in the United States and left millions of people without power after running up the East Coast in late October. The storm hit hardest in New York and New Jersey.

Gov. Cuomo has put storm-related costs at $41.9 billion, while Gov. Christie has estimated a price tag of $36.8 billion.

The bill includes grant funding for owners of homes and businesses, as well as funding for public improvement projects on the electric grid, hospitals and transit systems to prevent damage from future storms.

John Stone, a resident of New York's Staten Island, owned two homes before the storm. One was destroyed; the other was so severely flooded that it remains unlivable.

But he expressed no anger over the House's decision. "They'll just have to do it all over again, I suppose. What can you say?"

"It's a lot of money," he said, adding "there's a lot of other things they've got to do."

He tends to vote Republican, and doesn't plan to turn away from the party, he said, although, he added, "I don't give them much money anyway."

He's been living with relatives in New Jersey.

New York Mostly Ignored Reports Warning Of Superstorm

 

More than three decades before Superstorm Sandy, a state law and a series of legislative reports began warning New York politicians to prepare for a storm of historic proportions, spelling out scenarios eerily similar to what actually happened: a towering storm surge; overwhelming flooding; swamped subway lines; widespread power outages. The Rockaway peninsula was deemed among the "most at risk."

But most of the warnings and a requirement in a 1978 law to create a regularly updated plan for the restoration of "vital services" after a storm went mostly unheeded, either because of tight budgets or the lack of political will to prepare for a hypothetical storm that may never hit.

Some of the thorniest problems after Sandy, including a gasoline shortage, the lack of temporary housing and the flooding of commuter tunnels, ended up being dealt with largely on the fly.

"I don't know that anyone believed," acknowledged Gov. Andrew Cuomo this past week. "We had never seen a storm like this. So it is very hard to anticipate something that you have never experienced."

Asked how well prepared state officials were for Sandy, Cuomo said, "not well enough."
It wasn't as if the legislative actions over the years were subtle. They all had a common, emphatic theme: Act immediately before it's too late.

The 1978 executive law required a standing state Disaster Preparedness Commission to meet at least twice a year to create and update disaster plans. It mandated the state to address temporary housing needs after a disaster, create a detailed plan to restore services, maintain sewage treatment, prevent fires, assure generators "sufficient to supply" nursing homes and other health facilities, and "protect and assure uninterrupted delivery of services, medicines, water, food, energy and fuel."

Reports in 2005, 2006 and 2010 added urgency. "It's not a question of whether a strong hurricane will hit New York City," the 2006 Assembly report warned. "It's just a question of when."

A 2010 task force report to the Legislature concluded: "The combination of rising sea level, continuing climate change, and more development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to coast storms. ... The challenge is real, and sea level rise will progress regardless of New York's response."

The Disaster Preparedness Commission met biannually some years, but there are gaps in which there is no record of a meeting. However, some administrations, including Cuomo's, convened many of the same agency heads to discuss emergency management. But even under Cuomo, who has taken a much greater interest in emergency management after three violent storms in his first two years in office, there are still three vacancies on the commission.

Richard Brodsky, a former New York Democratic assemblyman who was chairman of the committee that created the 2006 report, credits administrations with making some improvements to the plan in recent years, such as requiring a specific plan to protect and evacuate the infirmed and to save pets.
"But on two issues related to Sandy – prevention and recovery – they did almost nothing," Brodsky said. "If Goldman Sachs was smart enough to sandbag its building, why wasn't the MTA smart enough to sandbag the Battery Tunnel?"

Sandy flooded both tubes of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, now called the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, which was one of the major and longest transportation disruptions of the storm. It also ravaged the Rockaways in Queens, particularly the waterfront community of Breezy Point, where roughly 100 homes burned to the ground in a massive wind-swept fire.

Among the other crises Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced on a daily basis during Sandy were the shortage of temporary housing, which continues, the long disruption of electricity and gasoline, generators in health care facilities swamped by floodwaters, restoring power from swamped electrical infrastructure and repairing commuter rail lines.

The warnings touched on many of these areas, but mostly in a broad way with few specific directions for action. Some areas, such as a shortage of shelters in New York City and repairing commuter rail lines quickly, have improved in recent years to some degree, but other areas such as making sure health facility generators are on upper floors are newly realized problems forced by Sandy, according to the former legislators.

"What you've got here is a great number of consequences that were foreseeable, but unforeseen," Brodsky said. "Prevention is politically less sexy than disaster response."

There was another obstacle to enacting calls for more preparation: funding. The state and city were each facing $1 billion deficits from a slow economic recovery before Sandy hit.

"As your budget shrinks, the first thing that goes out the door is emergency management, the first thing," said Michael Balboni, New York's disaster preparedness point man in the Republican-led Senate and in the Democratic Spitzer and Paterson administrations from 2001 to 2009.

"To take the 1978 law and really enable it, you need to put a ton of money behind it and there was no political will to do it," said Balboni, who now heads an emergency management firm in Manhattan.
Cuomo is now asking the federal government for more than $32 billion to cover the immediate costs triggered by Sandy, and an additional $9 billion for preventive measures to better protect the area for the next big storm.

The Cuomo administration insists that it has had robust emergency planning and clearly made important changes after tropical storms Irene and Lee slammed much of upstate and threw a scare into New York City in 2011. The administration created three regional disaster logistics centers and conducted training and exercises and, before Sandy, took extensive preparatory steps learned from Irene to "preposition" equipment and top staff and National Guard troops around the state.
"These initiatives were intended to strengthen the existing emergency response infrastructure which had not previously been a priority for the state before Gov. Cuomo took office," the administration told the AP in a statement.

Spokesmen for previous administrations and for Bloomberg didn't respond to requests for comment.
Like the state, the city has talked up storm preparedness in a series of hurricane and climate change plans since 2000. And it has taken some concrete steps, such as requiring some new developments in flood zones to be elevated, eliminating roadblocks to putting boilers and electrical equipment above the ground and restoring wetlands as natural storm-surge barriers.

Still, the city wasn't expecting Sandy, Bloomberg said in a speech this past week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had figured there was only a 1 percent chance that the Battery in lower Manhattan would see the 14 feet of water Sandy sent in, he said; the previous record, set in 1960, was 11 feet.

Bloomberg said the city would reassess building codes and evacuation zone borders, look at ways to flood-proof power and transportation networks, make sure hospitals are better prepared and do an engineering analysis of whether to build levees, dunes or other structures to protect the coast.

Credit : Huffington Post

New York, New Jersey Hurricane Sandy Victims Get $100 Bills From 'Secret Santa

NEW YORK — A wealthy Missouri man posing as "Secret Santa" stunned New Yorkers on Thursday, handing $100 bills to many in Staten Island who had lost everything to Superstorm Sandy.
The Kansas City businessman is giving away $100,000 this holiday season, and spent the day in New Jersey and New York giving away thousands. But he says money is not the issue.
"The money is not the point at all," said the anonymous benefactor as he walked up to surprised Staten Island residents and thrust crisp bills into their hands. "It's about the random acts of kindness. I'm just setting an example, and if 10 percent of the people who see me emulate what I'm doing, anybody can be a Secret Santa!"
A police motorcade with sirens took him across the borough, passing a church ripped from its foundations and homes surrounded by debris. At a nearby disaster center run by volunteers, a woman quietly collected free food and basic goods.
"Has anyone given you any money?" he asked her.
"No," replied Carol Hefty, a 72-year-old retiree living in a damaged home.
"Here," he said, slipping the money into her hand.
"But this isn't real money!" said Hefty, glancing at the red "Secret Santa" stamped onto the $100.
"It is, and it's for you," he tells her.
She breaks down weeping and hugs him.
And so it went, again and again.
Secret Santa started his daylong East Coast visit with stops in Elizabeth, N.J. Keeping close watch over the cash handouts was his security entourage – police officers in uniform from New York and New Jersey, plus FBI agents and former agents from various states. Some have become supporters, wearing red berets marked with the word "elf" and assisting "Santa" to choose locations where people are most in need. He himself wears an "elf" cap and a red top, plus blue jeans.
The group must choose stops carefully, and refrain from simply appearing outdoors in a neighborhood, lest they be mobbed by people hearing that cash is being handed out.
At a stop at a Staten Island Salvation Army store, one woman is looking over a $4 handbag. "But you get $100!" he tells her, offering the bill.
"Are you serious?" said Prudence Onesto, her eyes widening. "Really?"
"Secret Santa," he deadpans, breaking into a broad grin.
The 55-year-old unemployed woman opened her arms and offered him a hug.
An aisle over, 41-year-old Janice Kennedy is overwhelmed: She received four $100 bills.
Unemployed with a 2-year-old daughter, she lost her home in the storm and lives with her boyfriend. The money will go toward Christmas presents and her toddler's next birthday.
"You're not alone. God bless you!" the Missouri stranger tells Phillip and Lisa Morris, a couple in their 30s whose home was badly damaged – but now had an extra $300 in cash for rebuilding.
Secret Santa took up the holiday tradition from a close Kansas City friend, Larry Stewart, who for years handed out bills each December to unsuspecting strangers in thrift stores, food pantries and shelters. Stewart died in 2007 after giving away more than $1 million to strangers in mostly $100 bills.
The current Secret Santa will not divulge his name. Nor does he allow his face to be photographed. But he said he's been to cities across America, from San Diego to Chicago to Charlotte, N.C.
A reporter asked whether he might be a sort of Warren Buffett of Kansas City. He smiled mysteriously and said only that he admires Buffett for his philanthropy. "And I hope I give all my money away before I die."
Then, as suddenly as he arrived, the generous stranger left for the airport and home, riding in the volunteer motorcade he jokingly calls "my sleigh," zipping with ease through red lights and city traffic.

Credit : Huffington Post

Joe Biden Reassures Sandy Victims: 'You've Got A Homeboy In The Deal Who Gets It'

Vice President Joe Biden visited New Jersey on Sunday to see the devastation from Superstorm Sandy, and reassured victims that coming from a neighboring state he would stay on top of the devastation.

"So as the president said when he was up here with the governor, we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere. And you’ve got a homeboy in the deal who gets it," said Biden in Seaside Heights, N.J., according to White House pool reports.

Before that, he reflected on his Delawarean roots. "If you’re not an Easterner it’s hard to understand that the ocean to us is the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and everything else combined," he said. "It is a gigantic part of not only our economy but who we are. It’s a gigantic part of the culture as well."

"And every time the rest of the country is in real trouble, New Jersey and Delaware and New York and Connecticut etc., we respond, we respond. And it’s going to be a heavy lift," he continued. "These are difficult times in terms of budgets, but the president has made it clear that we are going to do everything we can to make sure that the Corps is fully funded, that FEMA has their needs and that all the programs that exist under the auspices of the federal government not only continue to exist but are funded so that we can make sure that this area of the country is fully, fully, fully restored."

The summertime beach community of Seaside Heights, on a barrier peninsula off the mainland of New Jersey, bore Sandy's brunt.

Biden later toured Hoboken, N.J., where he was shown pictures of the damage to the PATH system. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) greeted Biden by saying "Your holiness!"

Credit : Huffington Post