“We will rebuild.”
Her home was her sacred ground for nearly 40 years and even as her tears flowed unchecked, Veronica Peterson vowed she’d live there again.
Hurricane Sandy left a house on shaky stilts in the Tottenville section of Staten Island. Then vandals struct not once, but twice. It was almost enough to break this wife of an ailing retired firefighter and mother of eight. Almost.
“I’m just tired. This has hit my last nerve,” Peterson said holding a cup of hot soup given to her by a neighbor. “Look at my beautiful home. It was beautiful. What am I going to do now,” she said crying uncontrollably.
Monday the hurricane’s waves wiped out the lower floor and a little bungalow from the property completely. Firefighters from Rescue 5 showed up and shored up what remained.
“They saved it so I could get in and take a few mementos. And I take a few and a few I put on the side are (now) gone,” she said realizing looters had struck a second time.
It’s almost too much for Peterson to bear. The former school teacher retired to take care of her husband John Peterson, 69, who was a captain with the FDNY.
“My husband is a 911 survivor,” she said. “He’s having a lot of health issues right now. This is just about going to destroy him. He has a brain aneurysm. He has stuff in his lungs. He has a heart problem. We’re both walking around here like zombies.”
The couple waited most of the day for FEMA and looked over the house they mostly built themselves.
“This was an earth home. All this was recycled and reclaimed wood from the beach. We did all this work ourselves,” she said giving a tour of the skeletal remains.
She pointed out the old front door they used as a counter top, beams from a former firehouse and there’s even a sign saying ‘entrance’ that once hung over sliding doors at a Toys R Us store.
“We should just be saying goodbye. But I just can’t,” she said. “We’ve lived here for 38 years. My memories are all over here,” she said waving her hand over the expanse of the deck they built that stretches out toward the bay. Their next project was to install solar panels.
“This is sacred to me,” she said. “My children were raised here. They were christened here. I had their baptisms here. I mean, this is my spot in heaven. I have no flood insurance. We’re going to be wiped out by this.”
But still she was confident they would rebuild.
“”It will rise again,” she said of her home. “I’ll make my house better.”
John Peterson stood by her side and added, “we’re choosing to stay here. One advantage to growing old, there will be less disasters to look forward to.”
Late in the day someone from FEMA did come by and told them they’d be getting a check for $30,000.