They’ve been shouting from shaky rooftops and begging from battered basements, yet residents of the storm-ravaged Rockaways say all they have gotten back is silence.
With all the pumping, the backed-up toilets, the clogged sewers and houses that feel like frozen-food sections, residents say they feel abandoned.
“We haven’t gotten any help,” said Kathy Gambino, 51, who lives on flooded Rockaway Beach Boulevard. “Politicians are just driving by in their nice cars. Why don’t they come speak to us and tell us what we need to do?”
Gambino’s neighbor Regina McManus evacuated, as Mayor Bloomberg asked, but returned to a first-floor home that had absorbed four feet of water.
“It’s November, and it’s getting cold,” said McManus, 53. “I have three kids. How am I supposed to keep them warm?”
If that weren’t enough, she has brown water coming out of her pipes, her thyroid medication is running out and most of her clothes are ruined.
“I understand I need to wait my turn,” McManus said. “But please tell me: When will it be my turn?”
Deborah Carter is hoping she is next in line. Carter, the tenant association president of the Gravesend Houses, a seven-story complex of apartment buildings in Brooklyn, said her patience, like gasoline, is in short supply.
“Half of the development does have power, half doesn’t,” she said. “The grounds are wet, and the basement is wet, so they can’t turn on the electricity until it dries.”
She said young people in the building have been looking out for the elderly residents — which is more than she can say for officials.
“It’s been a little rough,” Carter said. “It has been a little humiliating. I have a lot of residents telling me that FEMA offered them two little bottles of water. I had a lot of residents crying about that.”
At St. Francis de Sales Church on Beach 129th Street in Belle Harbor, Queens, the gymnasium is filled with donated clothing, canned goods, shoes and towels.
“We got more stuff than I expected,” Monsignor John Brown said. “We don’t need clothes, just batteries, gas, generators and baby items.
“We got hit pretty hard over here,” he said. “This community is very resilient and determined to get back together. But how reasonable that is, I don’t know.”
Nicole Moriarty, 35, who was volunteering at the church, said, “This is a community of helpers, so I am not surprised to see everyone here.”
“We banded together after 9/11, and we are doing it again. You see a lot people here who lost stuff but are helping people who lost more.”
The storm’s effects also linger in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bath Beach, Gerritsen Beach, Gravesend and Coney Island.
“I slept in the car for two days,” said Richard Melendez, who lived on Neptune Avenue but is caring for his mom in the Gravesend Houses. “It’s terrible. But we’re trying.”
He said the city’s response has been slow.
“There is oil in the whole house, and it just destroyed everything,” he said. “We had to leave. There’s gas in the house.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton