What Sandy couldn’t destroy, a wrecking ball will.
Demolition begins today on homes ravaged by last year’s apocalyptic superstorm, with a row of red-tagged houses on Staten Island at the top of the list.
Damaged homes in the hard-hit borough will be the first of 350 citywide to be leveled, but city crews must first cut off power and gas lines and make surer neighboring homes won’t be damaged when the wrecking crews plough through.
Bulldozers, Dumpsters and pole-mounted spotlights yesterday lined the wrecked streets of Staten Island’s Ocean Breeze neighborhood, where Mike Taurozzi’s Quincy Avenue home will soon be an empty lot.
Taurozzi spent the weekend with friends frantically trying to get his possessions out of the house, even after a demolition company mistakenly towed the truck he was using to clean the place out.
“I have some things I need to remove, and I’m a little behind because they took my truck,” Taurozzi said. “I’m tired. I’m definitely punchy. I’ve been up over 36 hours.”
City officials said the demolition process has taken so long because agency directors wanted to make sure that homeowners received adequate counseling before their houses were turned to dust.
“They brought in caseworkers,” one source said. “Literally, psychiatrists were available.”
The city will not charge residents for taking down their houses but will seek reimbursement if the homeowner has insurance coverage for deconstruction.
“These homes are in bad shape,” said the source. “They could fall on their neighbors.”
Homeowners who differed with the city’s assessment on the level of damage to their property were allowed to bring in their own engineers to try to convince city officials the homes shouldn’t be razed.
“No building will be deconstructed without first notifying the homeowner, with the rare exception of structures that pose a safety hazard due to imminent risk of collapse,” said Peter Spencer, a spokesman for the Office of Housing Recovery.
Spencer said the city is also working with affected families on long-term housing plans.
Ray Weiler, 52, said his life is invested in his mother’s Quincy Avenue home. He’s just glad she won’t be around to see it come down.
“All she wants to do is come home,” Weiler said about his widowed mom, Veronica, 85, who’s been staying in Texas.
He has his own house right around the corner, and although he lives about 150 feet from the house where he grew up, he still longs for home.
“It’s breaking me,” Weiler said. “There’s a ton of memories here. All my family’s parties, every big event in my life happened right here.”
Additional reporting by David Seifman