PODCAST
Life After Sandy
Two years after Sandy, rebuilding remains slow and uneven across the region. Government aid is caught up in tight regulations. The folks who have made the most progress may be the ones who took the most dramatic step: selling their homes to New York state to be demolished so that the land underneath them can be returned forever to Mother Nature. There are many other ambitious plans on the drawing board, though, and some individuals and businesses are taking short-term steps to protect their property. WNYC is continuing to follow both the rebuilding process and the debate over just how to rebuild, here on this page.
Episodes
-
Six Years Later, an Innovative Sandy Program Yields Resilience (and Lots of Frustration)
Two years ago, Angela Tenteromano Nickel thought she got a good deal when she bought a home at auction on Wiman Avenue in the Great Kills neighborhood on Staten Island for $160,000. She had two goals—make a little money and improve the community by rebuilding a more storm resilient home there....
-
Staten Islanders Brainstorm for the Next Storm
For the fifth anniversary of Sandy, WNYC published a story exploring why so many people remained in harm’s way during the storm even after an emergency evacuation was ordered. The reasons are varied, but the design of warning systems and the lack of trust many residents have in the media and…
more -
After Sandy, Companies Profit from Flood Insurance Do-over
As the Federal Emergency Management Agency scrambled to right the wrongs of flood insurance companies under its watch, it was paying some two hundred workers $750 a day to do nothing. “We’d be sitting around for days on end with nothing to do because the system would be down.” said Jeff Coolidge,...
-
FEMA’s Broken Promise to Sandy Victims
Everything looked fine from the outside when Fran Adelson returned to her house the morning after Sandy hit in October 2012. Then she opened the front door. “Everything was in a different place,” she said. “Why is that piece of furniture over here? Why was that—you couldn’t wrap your mind around...
-
Thanks to Sandy, Wild Turkeys Roam Where Bungalows Once Stood
Bulldozed ground is distinctive: unnaturally flat and largely fallow. And it is now the must distinctive feature of a block in Staten Island that once bulged with 20 bungalows and the life of the inhabitants inside them. Almost all of the people of Buel Avenue are gone now. In a place where the…
more -
Sandy Took Her Home but Gave Her Some Perspective
After Sandy destroyed her apartment, Cherell Manuel became a problem solver and advocate for herself and thousands of other low-income New Yorkers who ended up in hotels. Today, she lives in a 3-bedroom apartment in Far Rockaway, Queens, the same neighborhood where she was rescued five years ago...
-
Five years after Sandy, Questions Remain About Whether New Jersey Is More Resilient
When the eye of Sandy made landfall just north of Atlantic City, Fran Baronowitz’s neighborhood – which was a few miles away in Ventnor – suddenly turned into a lake. Water bubbled up through the air ducts of her home, and the floors buckled so much that she trouble opening the front door when…
more -
City Spends Billions on Sandy-Damaged Homes, but Leaves Many Vulnerable
To the long list of complaints that has bedeviled the city's Build it Back program, add this one: When the program concludes next year, the city will have paid billions of dollars to rehab homes damaged by Sandy, but at least 3,500 of them will still be vulnerable to flooding from the Next Big…
more -
Why 'The Big U' Storm Barrier Could End Up as 'Half a J'
In June 2014 — 18 months after Sandy battered the region — Mayor Bill de Blasio joined state and federal officials outside a public housing complex on the Lower East Side to announce an ambitious plan to protect the neighborhood against The Next Big One. Over the previous year, The federal...
-
What the Next President Will Do (or Won't) About Climate Change
Through three presidential debates and on vice-presidential one this fall, no moderator asked the candidates about climate change. But Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine made sure to sneak in some answers anyway. "Conventional wisdom is that voters aren't going to vote on climate change or...
-
City's Sandy Repair Effort Leaves Some Applicants Behind
Patricia Sullivan lives with her mother and two daughters in a one-bedroom bungalow just a couple of feet above sea level in Midland Beach, Staten Island. When Sandy hit, the 14-foot storm tide rolled over a barrier road and into their sunken neighborhood like a tidal wave. The family just barely...
-
Four Years After Sandy, Rising Sea Levels Loom Over New Jersey Recovery
For most of the last century, modest, one-story summer bungalows lined this private strip of road that dead-ends at Vision Beach. Then Sandy made landfall here on Oct. 29, 2012, obliterating them. Today, except for the occasional vacant lot, the street has been transformed into two rows of...
-
A Sandy Rebuilding Program Long on Frustration, Now Short of Money
At first, the applicants in the city's program to rebuild the thousands of homes damaged by Sandy complained about lost paperwork, confusing directions, and endless delays. Now, another problem has emerged: the program is fast running out of money. The director of Build it Back, Amy Peterson…
more -
Organic Kale Salad with a Side of Hope
Every Wednesday evening, the parking lot fills with cars and dozens of people crowd into a dining room in Union Beach. Waiters and waitresses take their orders and bring out gourmet-quality food, made with local and organic ingredients. But this restaurant is nonprofit and run entirely by...
-
Learning to Love the Entirely Inadequate but Completely Indispensable Disaster Industry
Disasters are causing more and more damage, and the federal government is spending more and more money to rebuild afterwards. But before the construction crew can begin repairs, homeowners face months-long delays and poor customer service in the preliminary stages of the application process. Some...
-
After Sandy: Rebuilding a Home, Then Letting It Go
Stephen Drimalas, a 48-year-old city worker, barely escaped Sandy's floodwater with his life. "I had to speed out of here," he recalled. "Another minute or two and I wasn't getting out — that's how fast it came in." That night, two years ago, a storm surge pushed across New York Bay, poured over...
-
In Case of Hurricane, Take the R or the G Lines to Work
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority sustained $4.7 billion in damage after Sandy — two years ago to the day this Wednesday. And it will take much more than that to protect the nation's busiest transit system from another mega-storm. Here are some highlights of what's been done so...
-
Sandy Recovery Costs Up 50% and City Calls That a Victory
The costs of pushing papers in the name of Sandy rebuilding have increased by more than 50 percent over the city's initial expectations. Yet, the strangest thing about this story may be that the de Blasio administration considers that rate of inflation a victory. Under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg,...
-
Creator of NYC's Build It Back Says, 'Everybody's Mad'
Lost paperwork, extensive delays, contradictory instructions: New York City’s program to help owners of Sandy-damaged properties became a bureaucratic nightmare for many of the people it was supposed to be helping. But it was the type of nightmare, according to the man who created the program…
more -
Sandy Repair Program Designed to Protect Homeowners Frustrates at Least One
After months of delays in the city’s Build it Back program, Eleni Stavrakos-Ocampo thought she was lucky. She learned in March that she would be the second person to see repairs begin on a Sandy-damaged home. City officials were also excited to break through the bad press the program had…
more -
Summer Is Construction Season in the Rockaways
Backhoes and bathhouses. Sand pumping and suntan oil. Welcome to the new beach season in the Rockaways. As the second summer begins since Sandy hit the Northeast, residents along the peninsula in Queens are feeling that their community's artery — the 5.5 mile boardwalk that was upended during the...
-
Is the Jersey Shore Ready for Summer?
Memorial Day marks the beginning of the all-important summer tourism season at the Jersey Shore, an area that’s still rebuilding after Sandy. The popular narrative from political leaders last summer — and again this summer — is that the shore is “open for business.” But a closer look reveals a…
more -
Seaport City Pits Odds of Flooding Against Odds of Ever Being Built
The proposed Seaport City project would be built to withstand a 100-year-storm and make a generous allowance for sea level rise, according to a just-released feasibility report. But that still would fall short of European standards, which often require projects to be designed to withstand a...
-
Flood-Resistant Neighborhood Would Be 80 Years in the Making
A team of architects and consultants is proposing to build a new neighborhood of residential towers and office buildings on landfill in the East River as part of a counter-intuitive plan to make the city more flood resistant. The idea, called Seaport City, was hatched last year by the Bloomberg...
-
Fed Up With Rebuilding Delays, One Sandy Homeowner Sells
Around the time of the first anniversary of Sandy, back in October of 2013, Victor Dolan gave up; he and his wife sold the property on Staten Island where they had lived together for decades. It was an old-fashioned single-story bungalow on Bedford Avenue in Midland Beach — green with white trim…
more -
Zero Homes Repaired. 19,920 to Go
If Tolstoy were alive today, he might say: Every unhappy Build it Back family is unhappy in its own way. Build it Back is the city’s program for Sandy-damaged homes, and it has drawn numerous complaints. But each one is a little different. Tami Cherichetti of Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, was told…
more -
It Really Does Take a Village to Rebuild After Sandy
It is one thing to get 30 of your neighbors to decide to throw a block party together. Or to all put your trinkets out of the sidewalk for a rummage sale on the same Saturday. But imagine getting them to decide to raise their houses up on higher foundations. And then, all together, build a...
-
Cuomo's Sandy Charity Benefits Private Equity Investors
While Sandy victims in New York wait anxiously for government assistance to rebuild their homes, a charity organized by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the wake of the storm to aid homeowners has steered millions of dollars to two troubled state-sponsored housing developments in Brooklyn. The complexes are...
-
Building Human Infrastructure in the Rockaways
In the year since Sandy, affected neighborhoods have started to rebuild, but also prepare for their response to the next storm. Jaime Jordan, one of the founders of Rockaway Help, talks about the work she and her neighbors are doing in the Rockaways to build up social infrastructure as a key part...
-
One Year After Sandy: Lessons Learned, Challenges Ahead
It's one year since Hurricane Sandy battered the region. WNYC editor Matthew Schuerman and reporter Janet Babin discuss where we've been over the last year, including things that have changed and things that haven't but should. Plus, your calls: What lessons did we learn over the last year, and...
-
6 Things That Changed Since Sandy—And 5 That Haven't
A year after Sandy, maybe the most that the region has accomplished is plans—lots of them: From government commissions, utility companies, architects and planners, about what to do and how to do it. It is harder to find ways in which changes have already taken root. Below, WNYC offers some…
more -
Rebuilding in the Flood Zone, the Same Way as Before
Midland Beach, Staten Island, is a working-class neighborhood on the eastern shore of Staten Island that sits just a few feet above sea level. It is exactly the kind of neighborhood where, according to a major report issued in August by the federal government, homeowners need to elevate their…
more -
Life After Sandy: One Year Later
Early on Oct. 29, 2012, tropical storm Sandy, churning through Atlantic Ocean waters in an easterly direction along America's Eastern Seaboard, hit a high pressure cold front and curved north-northeast. It was a left turn that became a left hook, aimed straight at the ribs of New Jersey. Sandy's...
-
In Limbo, Long After the Waters Rose
On Oct. 29 of last year, Cherell Manuel and her kids escaped Sandy's rising flood waters on Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway. The storm demolished their rented apartment and ruined their belongings. They were four of several thousand New Yorkers who took shelter in city hotels after the storm.…
more -
One Year Since Sandy, Little has Changed on Fielder Avenue, Ortley Beach
One year since Sandy washed away whole houses, knocked out boardwalks and flooded roadways, pockets of the Jersey Shore remain dead zones, with few residents back at home and little progress on damaged homes. Residents who applied for federal loans have fared far better than those who applied for...
-
Sandy Survivors Still Grappling with Memories of Those They Lost
Until last October, Santo and Gale Lisa had spent 30 dry years in their house in Ocean Breeze, Staten Island. No wave had ever come close to cresting the raised boulevard that lies between them and the beach. But then Sandy pushed a white-capped surge of water down their street. "That's how fast…
more -
In Public Housing, Temporary Boilers Are Here To Stay (For A While)
Nearly a year after Sandy devastated some public housing projects, thousands of people at those developments still depend on temporary, mobile boilers for heat and hot water. Residents say these devices deliver unreliable service, and many worry they are in for another cold winter.
-
1 in 10 New Yorkers Might Be at Risk in Case of Evacuation
Hours before Sandy hit on Oct. 28, 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood in an evacuation shelter on the lower east side and urged residents of Zone A — the area most in danger of flooding — to get out. “We have a plan to keep you and New Yorkers safe. If you follow that plan we’ll get through this...
-
Cuomo Expands Sandy Buyouts to 600 on Long Island
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is expanding his Sandy buyout program to more storm-damaged homes—this time to Long Island. The state has sent out several hundred letters to homeowners in six clusters, most of them directly along the waterfront on the island’s South Shore. The communities targeted...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Two years after Sandy, rebuilding remains slow and uneven across the region. Government aid is caught up in tight regulations. The folks who have made the most progress may be the ones who took the most dramatic step: selling their homes to New York state to be demolished so that the land underneath them can be returned forever to Mother Nature. There are many other ambitious plans on the drawing board, though, and some individuals and businesses are taking short-term steps to protect their property. WNYC is continuing to follow both the rebuilding process and the debate over just how to rebuild, here on this page.
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Life After Sandy have?
Life After Sandy currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Life After Sandy about?
Two years after Sandy, rebuilding remains slow and uneven across the region. Government aid is caught up in tight regulations. The folks who have made the most progress may be the ones who took the most dramatic step: selling their homes to New York state to be demolished so that the land...
How often does Life After Sandy release new episodes?
Life After Sandy has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Life After Sandy?
You can listen to Life After Sandy on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
URL copied to clipboard!