Community Corner

The Disillusionment of Post-Sandy Recovery

With attention waning, the realization of the damage of Hurricane Sandy is just setting in for some.

 

The crash is steep. Ceiling to flooded basement.

Hurricane Sandy tore through the Jersey Shore and elicited a response like none other. Local and national news outlets arrived in droves. Television cameras framed sad faces alongside piles of debris. Benefit concerts paired aging rock stars with a new cause. Volunteers arrived by the busload from throughout the country. Checks were written, memoed with words like hope and optimism.

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It’s what they call the honeymoon phase of a disaster. Like the ocean water that shifted buildings from their foundations, this surge too would eventually have to recede.

Now, the only thing left is reality. It’s stark. Daunting. The damage left behind is all that remains, and restoration — the hopeful promise of restoration — is still sodden, in some cases years down the road.

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It’s fear, actualized.

Disaster Response Continuum

The graph looks like it could double as the one used to document the trajectory of the United State’s late 2000’s housing market. Labeled as the “Disaster Stages and the Care Continuum,” the graph represents a steady, mostly flat line leading up to a tremendous upswing, an upswing that’s followed, almost immediately, by a long fall.

This is where disaster response bottoms out.

According to the chart, which is disseminated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the drop has a name. It’s disillusionment. It’s the feeling that comes from understanding just how far the road to recovery winds, and just how alone you’ll be when you traverse it. It’s where many towns and their residents are likely to find themselves right now.

The pit, which eventually gives way to working through the grief, is where Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long finds herself right now.

Just days after Sandy struck, Long and other borough officials gathered the town’s residents at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School's Borden Stadium to give them an update about the town.

No one had been admitted to assess the damage. They knew, simply by the heavily armed National Guardsmen that blocked the bridges leading into Sea Bright, that things were bad. But Long was optimistic, at least outwardly.

Long held a piece of a sign above her head that read: “DO." It was a piece of debris found behind beach-side borough hall, a shattered sign that once advertised signature summertime hangout of the area, Donovan’s Reef.

The two letters, and the recovery effort it implied, became the town’s rallying cry. “Do is what we’re going to do,” she said to a cheering crowd. “We’re going to rebuild our town, sustainably, for the future. A better Sea Bright then you saw before and not a different Sea Bright. Sea Bright is not gone. Sea Bright is its people. Sea Bright is you!”

An oversized check dedicated to Sandy relief still sits in the window at Sea Bright Borough Hall, which continues to operate as a makeshift recovery center five months after Sandy.

The soft-rock group Train performed and filmed a private concert for the town’s residents and local first responders for a future televised benefit. Sea Bright lit its Christmas tree and smiled for VH1’s cameras.

That night may have been Sea Bright’s post-Sandy peak.

Things have tempered since then. Long, only half jokingly, said she’s abandoned “DO” as her personal mantra and replaced it with “I feel like my head’s going to explode.” Many of the town’s businesses are still shuttered. Downtown buildings, no longer structurally sound, need to be torn down. Some residents still haven’t returned home.       

“It was a really great honeymoon we had here, but that good will, all of that compassion, it’s not possible to sustain that,” Long said at a recent public information session. “Now I feel frustrated all of the time.”

The care continuum chart consists of six stages. The first stage is warning, it relates to the response residents have to an impending storm. The second stage is impact and rescue. This is where the initial fear and shock, followed by some feeling of relief, comes in to play.

It’s also where the honeymoon stage begins. The next three stages are aftermath, relief, and short-term recovery. The rise. The fall. Heroism. And at the bottom, grief.

Realization.

Hope and Healing

New Jersey Hope and Healing representative Peggy Haas has seen this kind of reaction before. It’s what she and her organization, in partnership with the Mental Health Association of New Jersey, have tried to educate both residents and municipal officials about since the Storm.

No one, a pamphlet distributed by the organization reads, is untouched by the experience of a disaster. What victims of Sandy need, now, is information about what they’re going through, assurances that their feelings of doubt and fear and frustration are not only warranted, they’re to be expected.

“(It’s) an absolutely normal reaction to a completely abnormal event,” she told a crowd at a recent Sandy information session.

Those still struggling to recover from the storm are undoubtedly facing a situation where they’ve been stripped of control. Flood insurance payouts have yet to reach many storm-battered residents. Local zoning and planning boards are delaying reconstruction by requiring variances. Contractors are booked for months in advance and there are always concerns of price gouging to be dealt with. 

And what symbolizes a lack of control more than surging floodwaters pouring through your home?         

"We can help you,” Haas said.

In addition to its educational reading material, which encourages Sandy victims, among other things, to seek accurate information and share their experiences with other, New Jersey Hope and Healing offers crisis counseling and has established support groups and conferences throughout the state.

Long-term Recovery

Frank Lawrence, who coordinates volunteers for Sea Bright and works with Clean Ocean Action on restoration efforts, said the disaster chart, while scary, represents the need for long-term recovery efforts.

By maintaining a level of volunteerism and working on projects that aid in a community’s attempts at restoration, the transition from the depths of post-Sandy grief to a level of acceptance and adjustment can be a smooth one.

And while the need for help persists, so too does the need to know that you’re not alone.

“(The chart) made me feel better about what I’m going through,” Long said. “This is normal.

“It will level out at some point…we will see progress at some point and that will give us strength.”


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