Photo by Dan GuarinoTwo years after Sandy came to Broad Channel, resident Barbara Toborg was asked, “Are you still out of the area?”
“No!” she said.
Where are you now?
“Home!” she gratefully replied.
On a sunny October Sunday afternoon, Toborg and other members of the Broad Channel Historical Society hosted a semi-annual Historical Day at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Prince-Wynn Post 260 just off Cross Bay Boulevard on Shad Creek Road.
Within the newly rebuilt VFW Hall, more than 100 years of the island community’s collective history, in the form of photographs, artifacts, newspapers and personal accounts were on view.
The last Broad Channel Historical Day, also at the VFW, took place on a windy Sunday afternoon, October 28, two years ago.
On the Monday evening that followed, October 29, a raging Hurricane Sandy engulfed this “small town in the big city.” Overnight in Broad Channel, events went from recalling history to becoming living history itself.
Then: Sandy changed Broad Channel in one night. Here family and neighbors pick up the pieces on Church Road, saying goodbye to the home that has been in the family for generations. Photos by Dan GuarinoSome evacuated ahead of the storm. Many stayed put, citing the eventually underwhelming experience of Hurricane Irene the year before.
All have vivid recollections of what they found the next day.
“After the storm, Father Dunne and I walked Cross Bay Boulevard. I never realized how hard it would be to put into words my thoughts and feelings about what happened,” said Father Richard Ahlemeyer, pastor of Broad Channel’s St. Virgilius RC Church.
With deep family roots in Broad Channel, Ahlemeyer grew up in the community where neighbors have lived near each other for generations and newcomers quickly adopt its way of life.
Now: Two years later, Broad Channel is continuing to rebuild. This home on Noel Road, now finished, was one of the first to be raised.“My initial reaction was memories of Hurricane Donna in 1960. I was 10 years old. The images of the boats and destruction were similar.”
But, he said, “Sandy brought just a sense of sorrow and loss.”
What were things like in Broad Channel? Longtime Channel resident Judy Zack recalled, “The destruction was brutal.”
“I saw boats that had floated up and wedged themselves between houses, fences, including my own, had floated (out) to the sea without a trace. Houses floated off their foundations. Things were so out of place, as if we were a board game that got knocked to the floor. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. (There was) no heat, or electricity and no gasoline.”
“But I was frozen with heartbreak when I opened my front door. The devastation was so great I didn’t even recognize some of my own belongings.”
BC Civic Association President Dan Mundy Jr. noted Broad Channel “looked like something out of a war zone. Boats and debris, including large items such as shipping containers, (were) strewn across the streets and boulevard.
But, Mundy points out, that was also the point where things began to turn around. “Initially residents could be seen just walking around checking on their neighbors and surveying the damage. Within hours homeowners could be seen getting to work, throwing out mattresses, clothes, and all sorts of personal items to the curb and sweeping the remaining water out of the homes.”
On the second day after the storm, Mundy and others began to clear the muck and saltwater debris from the floor of the American Legion Hall. Shortly afterward, more than 400 residents, mostly on foot, came and crowded into a town hall informational meeting there.
Later, the hall became a hub that was feeding and supplying up to 1,000 people a day.
“We overcame this massive natural disaster by coming together and helping each other without any formal assistance from the federal or state agencies.”
“While that type of tight knit community is something Broad Channel has long been known for it was never on greater display then in the months following …Sandy.”
“Everywhere you looked,” Judy Zack added, “neighbors were helping other neighbors. Everyone shared what little they had. The first one on my block to get their stove in running order made coffee and tea and went door to door handing it out.”
Barbara and Fred Toborg, like many, also experienced firsthand the impromptu help of others.
After their daughter Lili posted photos of their destroyed first floor on Facebook, her former classmates “at Trinity School in Manhattan, where Fred coached soccer for 30 years…started the ball rolling for an avalanche of help from the Trinity ‘family.’ A group of alums came to our house with food, cleaning supplies, rolled up their sleeves and helped.”
Judy Zack added, “I remember people from out of the area setting up a food kitchen in the park and someone from Pennsylvania brought hot food and set up tables on the top of the block. The generosity was amazing. I think of all the things that came out of the storm, the kindness and compassion are the things that I will remember most.”
Like many communities hit by a storm that barreled up from the Caribbean to Canada, the journey from October 2012 to October 2014 has not been an easy one for Broad Channel.
“I really can’t answer how things are,” Joyce Adamiszyn replied candidly. “I am still waiting for ALL the right permits to go through so I can rebuild.”
“Every time we think that construction is going to start, something else gets in the way.”
Not only do new requirements delay the process, she says, “but that also changes the architect plans, so new plans need to be drawn up. And also this needs more money.”
“I guess, she notes, “having flood insurance we thought would pay in full was a joke.”
“I have a deeper appreciation for the suffering of people when I hear of disasters in other parts of our country or around the world,” said Father Ahlemeyer.
“At the recent Civic meeting, I felt the frustration, anger, fear and uncertainty of many as they try to navigate the waters of FEMA, Insurance, Build-It- Back and other programs.”
But he says, two years later, “at least the same resolve which carried our community through the weeks and months after the storm is still strong.”
“As I reflect on the experience, I must admit that the resolve, compassion and hard-work of the people of Broad Channel give me a sense of hope. The true spirit of our community came out and people worked together, cried together, suffered together and helped one another through very difficult times.”
As the people of Broad Channel continue to chart this new chapter in the community’s history, Dan Mundy Jr. reflects, “Things have improved dramatically in the two years since Sandy. Residents have rebuilt their homes, most families have returned to the town, the stores are open and new and improved, the streets have been repaved and look great, [and] the street raising project is underway…”
“We continue to work with the head director of the Build it Back program,” he says, “and while it has been seriously flawed it is getting better and I believe that we will see many homes rebuilt and elevated thru this program and residents reimbursed as well.”
On Monday, October 20, Mayor Bill de Blasio stood on a Broad Channel street with Mundy, residents and other officials, specifically to tout progress in the city’s rebuilding programs across New York.
Meanwhile, as a community perched on an island, Mundy notes “We are working actively with the Army Corps of Engineers to identify many projects that they may fund such as large tidal gates, berms, dunes, oyster reefs and wetlands to help reduce the impact of the next storm.”
Many of these ecologically based resiliency efforts and initiatives go back decades in Broad Chanel.
And, Mundy details, “We have seven great projects that will improve the town’s resiliency that have been approved by the state’s NY Rising project, and that should be funded shortly.”
Broad Channel also led the way in what became national fights against such things as the Biggert-Waters Act and FEMA elevation requirements.
As they have always done, people in Broad Channel take the life of their community very personally. That bond is even more evident now after the storm.
There is still a great deal of work to be done, and recovery is very much a work in progress. Even now it seems like it has taken two years of struggle to get many rebuilding projects finished, or even started.
Still, as the second anniversary of Hurricane Sandy approaches, as Judy Zack put it, “How astonishing to see this little town come back to life. Day after day, week after week, we shouldered the burden but never abandoned hope.
“Every day the sounds of hammers, saws and drills proved we are a neighborhood of doers not whiners. To see the homes and community buildings being rebuilt, and in many cases, better than they were, to see the town working collectively for a common goal of repair and improvement, should be a point of pride for all of us.
“There is no doubt about it; we are a community on the upswing.”
Whether still displaced, rebuilding or finally returning, Barbara Toborg summed up the feeling of many towards the Channel.
Referencing the fantastical journey of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, which likewise started with a great storm, she said, “The line often quoted is very true. There’s no place like home.
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