Baby toys, photo albums, broken china—these are just some precious items that can be found in fast rising heaps of waste at a temporary landfill in JacobRiis Park.
Debris from storm battered Far Rockaway has been piling up at the park’s parking lot –by thousands of tons a day—thanks to sanitation workers who have been clearing thrash and sand-clogged streets.
The dumping lot now has a circumference that measures three quarters of a mile, with rows of rubble about 15 feet high with alternating sand barriers that have been strategically placed to collect any material that may ooze from the refuse. Everything from electronic appliances, to construction materials, to chunks of boardwalk and people’s cherished memories lie scattered here.
“These are the contents from people’s homes,” said Chief Keith Mellis, a Sanitation Department spokesman, as he gave reporters a tour of the makeshift dumping site. “There are a lot of personal items that people have lost. It’s very sentimental for workers picking it up because they see the baby toys, the photos, and picture frames. It could be you or me.”
New York’s Strongest have been hauling 11,000 tons of garbage in about 1,400 truckloads a day. The average sanitation truck holds 16 tons.
“We’re picking up more storm debris in one day here than in an average garbage collection day for the entire city,” said John Hickey, a Sanitation chief who’s in charge of clean-up operations. “It’s phenomenal. We opened this up a couple of days ago on the fly and look how massive this is.”
Hickey compared the scale of the work being done in the Rockaways to the clean-up after 9-11 but noted that while there are no bodies recovered here, there are plenty of raw emotions.
“We’re dealing with families and everything they’ve owned. Items that may have been passed down from generation to generation are somewhere in here.”
“One woman came in here this morning looking for something but she started crying when she realized it would be impossible to find,” Hickey said.
While it’s still too soon to say when the clean-up efforts will be over, Hickey said the department is determined to help the neighborhood regain a sense of normalcy. “People are stopping to thank us for helping them. We’ve been here since the day after the storm, right with the NYPD and the Fire Department and we’ll be here as long as it takes.”