Rubble cleanup in NY, NJ is massive undertaking

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Just a few months ago, the parking lot at Jacob Riis Park on New York City’s Rockaway seashore was filled with happy beachgoers. Now, it is home to a mountain of misery from superstorm Sandy — a growing pile of garbage containing everything from mangled appliances, splintered plywood and sodden drywall to shreds of clothing and family photos.

The seagull-pecked pile, at least two stories high, three- quarters of a mile long, and fed by an endless caravan of dump trucks, is just part of a staggering round-the-clock operation along hundreds of miles of coastline to clear away the mangled mess of homes, cars and boats so the rebuilding can begin.

Three weeks in, it is an effort that has strained the resources of sanitation departments and landfill operators and caused headaches and heartache for thousands of families in the sprawling disaster zone.

The lucky have only had to empty their basements of soggy belongings. Others have been forced to strip their flood-ravaged homes down to the studs and pile drywall, furniture, clothing and appliances on the sidewalk.

“We’ve seen people put virtually all their worldly possessions at the curb,” said Mike Deery, a spokesman for the town of Hempstead, which includes several beach and bay hamlets on Long Island’s South Shore. “We’ve gone down streets and picked up the entire contents of homes and come back the next day and have it look like we haven’t been there in months.”

In the three weeks since the storm, New York City alone has removed an estimated 271,000 tons of wreckage from flooded neighborhoods. That doesn’t include the downed limbs and trunks of some 26,000 damaged trees.

New Jersey shore towns have been adding to big piles of rubble just like the one at Jacob Riis. One of the biggest ones, in Long Branch, reaches nearly three stories into the sky from a vacant lot a block from the ocean.

As of Friday, auto insurance companies had reported storm damage to at least 52,000 vehicles, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Many of those cars floated on the tide and were left smashed, silt-filled and strewn across sidewalks and yards.

In Long Beach, N.Y., a barrier-island city of 33,000 people that was completely inundated by the storm surge, public-works crews worked 16-hour shifts to scoop up hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand that had buried city streets. The mountain of silt they have created now stands five stories high.