A ringing sound fills my ears as I
roll over in bed. The sound is not my alarm, but the daily noise of hammers
striking nails and the angry buzzing of wood saws. It is 8 a.m. and the workday
has begun. It’s been a year and a half since Hurricane Sandy decimated Breezy
Point, a small beach town located right outside New York City, and the
rebuilding process has just barely begun.
Deemed the “Irish Riveria”, Breezy Point has
always been a small town, where summer residency reaches a high of 12,000, and
settles down to just fewer than 5,000 through the winter months. The streets,
which were once lively with activity, are still eerily quiet, deserted except
for construction workers.
It has been a hard return for most,
a mix of waiting on money from the government or insurance companies, waiting
for permits to clear for all levels of construction, or trying to find a
contractor, it has been an arduous last year. We are still in recovery, and for
most it will take years to return to the normalcy of daily life. We are a
patchwork town now, where homes are spaced apart by empty sand lots. And yet,
throughout everything, we have not lost our sense of community, the love for
our town, and our neighbors.
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