BY STORM

Words and Images by Fabian Palencia

On October 29, Hurricane Sandy landed in New York, causing more than $71 billion in damage. Months after the disaster, the communities most affected are still struggling to recover. While Sandy wreaked havoc throughout the five boroughs and Long Island, the Rockaway section of Queens was particularly devastated. The tragedy left much of the peninsula unrecognizable to residents of the community, as well as city dwellers that used it as a summer escape from the pressures of living in New York.

As a kid growing up in Queens, I spent a lot of time going to Rockaway Beach, especially with my friends. Relatively easy to reach by train, it’s where we went when we couldn’t get to Jones Beach and was easier to get to than Coney Island. Admittedly, there was a stretch of my adult life when it was no longer a nice place to visit. A rise in crime and neglected beaches drove many from the boroughs away. Like me, they found private pools and the beaches of Long Island a more suitable alternative to the rough and tumble beaches of New York City.

It wasn’t until December of 2010 that a friend convinced me to go surfing in the middle of winter. What really amazed me was that when we got to the beach, the water was busy with crowds of people in wet suits. The light snow wasn’t enough to keep Rockaway’s emerging surf community from taking advantage of the waves. While I was terrible at surfing, I immediately found myself returning on a regular basis over the next couple of years to photograph the scene. I was intrigued, not only by the sport, but by the beach culture that I never would have known had I not gone in the the water that cold December day on B90th Street.

In the days leading up to Sandy’s landfall, residents had conflicting feelings about the severity of the storm and the impact it would have on New York. Many who remembered Irene a year earlier thought the city and the media were blowing things out of proportion and ignored the mayor’s pleas for evacuation.

On the night of the storm, we started to get word that some houses in Breezy Point had caught fire, and because the tide was still high, it was difficult for firefighters, many who lived in the area, to put out the blaze. Once I started getting a better idea of how bad things were in the Rockaways, I felt a painful sense of urgency to see things for myself. But due to gas shortages and no public transportation, it wasn’t until November 2, that I was able to make my way there after and a friend got me over the Cross Island Bridge and dropped me off in the lower 160s.

It looked as if someone had dropped bombs over Rockaway. There was intense confusion and hopelessness on every face I saw. As I walked east towards B90th Street, I made photo after photo, but it was almost impossible to concentrate. It was an overwhelmingly emotional experience. The first person I spoke to was a woman named Alice Bridges, a diabetic who lives in Rockaway Park . She was in desperate need of insulin but unable to find any.

“Right now I’m eating, I have gotta be afraid my sugar won’t go up sky high. I’ll wind up blacked out and they’ll have to take me to a hospital,” she vented. “Then, the city will have to pay more money, ‘cause I’m going to have to be admitted. I’m just looking for help. Where do people go when they need medications and all their medication has been damaged because of the flood?”

I was unable to give her an answer. Every time I stopped to talk to people, I heard the same desperation in their voices.

I returned to Rockaway several times over the months, hoping to see signs of progress, but it seemed slow and infrequent. While the rest of the city seemed to carry on business as usual, Rockaway was in a state of arrested development, forgotten, out of sight, out of mind. How could one of the richest cities in the world leave one of its most prized neighborhoods in such disarray?

On one of my trips, I went to a small enclave of homes in Far Rockaway that was surrounded by water. Not far from the Nassau County border, just off Mott Avenue, it was a middle class neighborhood housing mostly Caribbean families. I met Aydon Gabourel, a homeowner with a wife and two kids who also lived with with his mother and aunt. Like many others, he was reluctant to evacuate after leaving for Hurricane Irene and returning to find barely any damage. Although some of his neighbors took no chances and left as Sandy approached, he remained.

His house was badly damaged, but he was unable to get a FEMA grant because he had insurance -- which wasn’t enough to pay for the damage. He feared that another storm or economic collapse (or both) would wipe him out entirely.

In spite of his troubles, Aydon worried about those who have it worse, who can’t rely on credit or are too old to keep working and can’t afford to rebuild. Like many others I spoke to, he believes that the possibility of another devastating storm is strong. But regardless of what lies ahead, he is rebuilding. Rockaway is rebuilding. The people there are resilient. In many ways, it has brought them closer together. Where once some might have been strangers, now they share a bond that only survival can create.

I last traveled to B90th Street on March 26. Most of the debris was gone, but everything still looked broken. Some businesses had returned, but many would never reopen. I ran into Alice Bridges, and she said although it had once felt like she was sinking in quicksand, she was now filled with hope. “We have a new church that just came, and that makes me feel good."

I saw construction crews working on what used to be the boardwalk., And even though the weather was cold and overcast, for the first time in months, I saw a crowd of surfers in the water, ready to ride the next wave.