A year after Sandy, a barricade blocks motorists from entering Fisher Street at MacArthur Avenue in Sayrevllle. Many of the flood-damaged homes in the neighborhood, which includes Weber Avenue, are now being purchased by the state government. STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER ERIC SUCAR Superstorm Sandy isn’t over for Jennifer Herrick. Although it has been nearly a year since the storm’s surge sent 15 feet of water, sewage and oil crashing into blocks of homes in Sayreville, including hers on Weber Avenue, Herrick and her neighbors are far from seeing an end to this chapter in their lives.
“When the buyout program was originally announced, it was said that closings would occur by Labor Day,” Herrick said, reflecting on the multiple hurdles she’s encountered on the road to recovery. But Oct. 15 marked the first and only closing on a home buyout in the borough. Sandy: “When we were going Then & through the buyout process now, and the Christie administration talked about howpages quickly they would act … I
6, 22 & 23 think they underestimated how long it was going to take, and they should have overestimated to be on the safe side. A lot of families made decisions based on that information,” Herrick said.
Herrick’s family is participating in the buyout program through the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Blue Acres program, which will raze the homes of willing sellers and turn their properties into open space. Gov. Chris Christie announced in May that $300 million was approved to purchase
1,000 homes, 350 of which are located in Sayreville and South River. For some families that are physically and financially unable to return to their homes, the buyout may be the only feasible option.
“None of us in the flooded areas of Sayreville has extra money for a new home,” said Herrick, whose neighborhood had a nearly 100 percent rate of interest in participating in the voluntary program. “We believe that about 30 percent of the offers are — no pun intended — under water, based on what they are offering, and I have to accept what they are giving me.”
The Herrick family has relocated, spending every bit of savings and investments to do so, she said.
“My husband [Steve] and I saw the writing on the wall in the spring that finding a new home could be a very real problem for us,” Herrick said. “After a short sale, it is very difficult, but not impossible to get another mortgage to buy a new house, so we went for a new house before the buyout came through, using our loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). It wasn’t enough to buy a new house, but through a lot of hoop jumping, we got another bank to give us a mortgage for the balance.”
Herrick said her buyout offer came in short of what she believes is the fair market value of the home, and the family will have to resort to a short sale back to their mortgage holder in order to pay off the remainder of their balance.
“Our mortgage company wants our payment in full,” Herrick said, explaining that the mortgage holder has kept the family’s six-figure flood-insurance payout check without cashing it, citing investor policy that it cannot take insurance money as mortgage payments. “That nearly cost us our disaster relocation loan, because the SBA sees the check as an [illegal] duplication of benefits. We were probably within days of losing our loan.” Sandy:
Despite the struggles in Then & recovery, it is clear to the now, Herricks that their ranchstyle pages home on Weber Avenue 22 & 23 will not be their home again. Their plan to ride out Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012, with sump pumps and a generator was nixed after discovering that the sump pumps did not work at a crucial point when the power went out and the deluge began to rush in.
With help from their neighbor, Sayreville police officer Tom Pavlik, Jennifer and Steve Herrick formed a human chain with their son Michael and his friend Matt Martino, and walked through ice-cold water — ranging from thigh-high to chin-high — for four blocks before reaching St. Stanislaus Kotska Church. There, they found a school bus that was under orders from the borough to wait for any residents who needed to evacuate to higher ground. Moments after they got to the bus, water began to lap at its wheels, and a stop sign blown clear from the ground slammed into the side of the bus.
“To us, the failure of our sump pumps was God’s intervention, because there was no reason why they should not have been working,” Herrick said. “In my head, I believe it was a sign that we were supposed to get out.”
It may have been a sign to evacuate, but it wasn’t a sign to go far. The Herricks chose to stay in Sayreville when purchasing their new home, while ensuring that their new investment would be as far away from water and as uphill as they could get.
“My husband and I were born and raised here,” Herrick said. “We had the opportunity to leave, but the people who live in this town and the way they took us in and cared for us and showed compassion, I just didn’t want to live anyplace else.”