Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on Oct. 29, 2012, leaving destruction in its path like the Steamboat Dock Museum in Keyport. Left: Former President Jimmy Carter joined a crew of Habitat for Humanity volunteers on Oct. 12, 2013, to help build a new home in Union Beach for a family displaced by the storm. Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity for Monmouth County have helped more than 100 families affected by superstorm Sandy through critical home repairs, house-lifts and a number of house demolitions and complete rebuilds.
And, according to Raymond Gabler, executive director of the local Habitat chapter, in order to meet the growing demand from families impacted by the Oct. 29, 2012, storm who still need help, the nonprofit had to grow itself.
“Habitat International came in within weeks after the storm and based on their experience with what happened with Katrina they said it was not going to be a sprint, but a marathon, and a multi-year recovery event.
FILE PHOTOS “These communities took decades to build, and it is not going to be rebuilt in a year or two. … There are still volunteers going down to help with Katrina 10 years later, so hopefully it is not going to last that long here, but I can see another few years of efforts to continue to rebuild the homes that were lost.”
Gabler said within the past two years alone, the nonprofit has completed seven new homes.
“Before the storm, we were at a pace of one new home a year, we’ve completed seven homes in two years, and so we are really proud of that,” he said.
According to Gabler, many of the homes the nonprofit has worked to repair or rebuild are in Union Beach.
“We looked at an analysis a couple of months back to see where the bulk of the homes we worked on were, and probably a little more than half have been in Union Beach and the rest of it has been spread out into neighboring towns such as Sea Bright, Long Branch, Port Monmouth, Middletown, Keansburg … so we’ve been in a number of towns.”
In late October 2012, the lives of thousands were changed forever when Sandy made landfall and devastated dozens of municipalities along the Jersey Shore.
Barbara Durchak recalls watching from her home in Union Beach as house after house in her neighborhood was wiped out. “Union Beach was devastated,” she recalls. “Most of the town was flooded and we lost street after street of homes.
“There were just sounds of sirens and dogs barking and car alarms going off.
“Pieces of homes and debris were floating down the street … and it was terrifying.”
While Durchak’s home was still standing after the storm, Sandy did leave its mark.
“I grew up in this town,” she said. “We didn’t expect this, my house hasn’t flooded in over 50 years … but it was a horrible night and as fast as [the flooding] came, it went, and it swept away a lot of the hopes of the people and a lot of the things that once defined our lives.”
Aside from the flooding, Durchak said the storm took down a tree in her yard and broke it in half, and also ripped a wall from the house.
“Thank God we didn’t lose any lives in Union Beach, we were blessed in that way, but after [Sandy] we were left with a lot of damage and picking up the pieces.”
Durchak said she went to multiple organizations for help, but the overwhelming demand for assistance hindered her prospects.
“It was such a shock for everyone, it was so overwhelming because nobody expected this, and so they were trying to adjust to the multitude of people that were just in need of help,” she said.
“After getting on waiting list after waiting list … I thought I could do it myself and repair the house, but the mold just started crawling up the walls, and it was horrible and my daughter woke up one morning and her eyes were pretty much swollen shut … so it was then I knew I couldn’t do it alone.”
After seeing a flyer for Habitat for Humanity for Monmouth County, Durchak said she reached out and was surprised at how fast the nonprofit reached out to her.
“I can’t get over how fast they responded to my call for help,” she said. “I told them, ‘If you can’t help me, please don’t tell me you can, because that’s crueler than telling me you can’t help me’ because I had just the littlest glimmer of hope left, and they said to me, ‘We’re going to help you and we are going to stay with you for the duration,’ and that meant so much, it was tremendous.”
According to Durchak, Habitat for Humanity for Monmouth completely gutted and rebuilt her house.
“We were really floundering, but they rebuilt our house, they raised our house and they truly raised us up, our spirits, because after a short time we became friends, we became names, we were people to them, we weren’t a just a number,” Durchak said.
“It is tremendous the difference between not only the house, you know the house is safe and it’s healthy, but we are safe and even though we are still trying to figure out exactly which way to turn because everything changed, we have been healed so much, and they gave me a solitude I didn’t have, and I think right now is the most peaceful I have felt in a very long time.”
Gabler acknowledged that one positive that comes from such a traumatic event is the sense of community it instills in people.
“One of the positives after a disaster like this is that it does bring the community together,” he said. “Everybody tries to help out one another, and we have had so many wonderful groups come to help out.”
Gabler said for the upcoming year the goal involves both repairing and rebuilding Sandy-devastated homes and working to build affordable housing for families.
“In total we hope to help 50 families in the next year and we expect about 20 to 25 of those to be Sandy-related,” he said. “At any one time we probably have six to 10 families that we have been helping that are Sandy-related.”
According to the New Jersey Organizing Project (NJOP), just over $600 million in Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Eleva- tion and Mitigation (RREM) Program funding has been distributed to families, and fewer than 2,000 are home for good, leaving nearly 6,000 who still remain in the program waiting.
The group is part of a coalition representing thousands of impacted families up and down the Jersey Coast who planned to hold an encampment Oct. 27-30 across from the Statehouse in Trenton to raise awareness of the families who are still displaced and to highlight solutions to get families home.
According to NJOP, less than 25 percent of the families remaining in the RREM program are home for good, and foreclosures are on the rise in Sandy-impacted communities. NJOP is also calling for coastal protections to safeguard vulnerable communities such as dune construction, restoring wetlands and building seawalls.
Gabler acknowledged that new sources of funding would have to be tapped to help the many families who remain displaced.
“So there are always new cases, as we finish up homes, a couple of new families present themselves … but the cases stepping forward now, a lot of them have some funding, but not complete funding, and that is where we are able to step in and help the families,” Gabler said.
For example, he said a family reached out who received RREM funding through the state, but they haven’t been able to finish their project because they ran out of funds.
“We will likely be able to step in and help the family complete the project and either raise the funds through corporate sponsors or donations … but I think our challenge going forward will be where our funding will be coming from,” he said.
“We expect [recovery efforts] to continue for at least another few years, but some of the major funding that we were able to rely on for the first couple of years are closing up offices or have moved on to the next disaster, so I think our challenge will be finding funding.”
Another issue involves the need to augment code enforcement and building inspections for Sandy-damaged properties.
Middletown Township has received a $100,000 state grant that will be used to hire additional code enforcement staff to monitor abandoned properties.
“We had a lot of damage from Sandy,” Anthony Mercantante, township administrator, said. “Hundreds of homes throughout Middletown were damaged and, while many have completed their repairs or are currently completing them, many other homes remain abandoned.
“We have a lot of construction activity going on, so hiring additional staff will help us make sure we are giving these properties the attention they need through expedited inspections, and hopefully we can get those families who have been out of their home for a while back into them faster.”