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Photos: Hurricane Sandy Devastated NYC 3 Years Ago Today
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 29, 2015
Modified Oct 30, 2015
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By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 29, 2015
Modified Oct 30, 2015
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It was three years ago to the day that Hurricane Sandy clobbered the northeast, killing at least 147 people in the U.S. (48 in NYC) and leaving billions of dollars of devastation in its wake. The storm's surge, a record-setting 14 feet, reached its peak after nightfall on the 29th, and was greatly amplified by high tides brought on by the full moon. When a Con-Ed substation on East 14th Street exploded and caught fire due to flooding, a large swath of Manhattan went dark for five days.
Staten Island and the Rockaway peninsula were hit hardest by Sandy when it made landfall, and the flooding caused widespread damage to Red Hook, lower Manhattan, Chelsea, and the subway system. A fire swept through Breezy Point, Queens the night of the surge, destroying over 130 homes. Photographer Tod Seelie documented the devastation in Breezy Point in the immediate aftermath—it looked like a war zone. Three years later, one local estimates that the neighborhood is about 75% rebuilt.
This week Mayor de Blasio has been touting the city's rebuilding efforts, noting that when he took office in 2014, the Build It Back program had not yet started construction on anything. Since then, 2,015 construction projects have started (including 1,217 construction completions), and approximately 5,300 reimbursement checks totaling over $100 million have been distributed. At a press conference on Staten Island today, de Blasio announced that the Build it Back single-family home program will be complete by the end of 2016.
The city is also implementing a $20 billion climate resiliency plan in an attempt to prepare the city for the next hurricane. Still, the city's infrastructure, particularly the subway system, remains very vulnerable to flooding. And today the Daily News reports that only half of NYCHA buildings damaged by Sandy will receive repair and resiliency funding from FEMA.
Photographer Jackson Krule, who was a junior at NYU at the time, took these photos of Rockaway about two weeks after Sandy hit, and returned multiple times. "I had to take a subway to a bus to a bus only to walk the last 1/2 mile," Krule recalls. "There was still damage and debris everywhere. I saw a couple of people on the phone with tears in their eyes talking to their insurance companies...The Boardwalk was completely ripped up. Seeing this I realized how high the water must have been. In Manhattan, where I lived at the time, we only lost power; there wasn't really so much damage. Coming to Rockaway, the damage from Sandy was devastating."
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climate change
hurricane sandy
hurricanes
rockaway
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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