They remember the water that filled the hallway of their New Jersey high school when Hurricane Sandy hit, and the constant buzz of hulking generators afterward.
They remember the isolation they felt when they lost power to their precious cellphones, and being reunited with classmates in portable school trailers.
But mostly, the students at St. Rose HS in Belmar remember the fish.
Workers removed more than 800 pounds of fish that flowed with the water into the school’s cafeteria during the superstorm.
But almost a year later, there’s hardly a trace of the damage that nearly destroyed the gritty Catholic school on the Jersey Shore.
“Our faith was really being tested,” said Sister Kathy Nace, the school’s principal. “But we’re bigger than the buildings.”
The school rebounded from a Hurricane Sandy surge that damaged more than 11,000 of its 35,000 square feet.
St. Rose, between a marina and the ocean, was one of the hardest-hit schools in the state.
The destruction was captured in an iconic photo published in The Post that now anchors the school’s Facebook page, a reminder of how far the school has come.
The photo shows a maintenance worker shoveling mud and tiles from a washed-out first-floor hallway, where water nearly reached the pictures on the wall.
Now the same hallway gleams like a car after a new wax job, with the school’s purple-and-gold colors proudly on display.
In the lunchroom, where perch and minnows swam for days after the storm, new tables and chairs welcome students every day.
During the repairs, students had to eat in the gymnasium.
“For a long time, we referred to the cafeteria as an aquarium,” Nace said. “I [kept] teasing the students that we’re having fish tacos and snapper soup.”
Gone are the portable classrooms that were hauled into the school’s parking lot. They had no restrooms or air conditioning, but Nace managed to put a positive spin on the situation at the time.
“We called them ‘mobile classroom units,’ ” said Nace, who has learned as much about construction in the last year as she has about perseverance. “I refused to let the teachers call them ‘trailers.’ ”
Students said it didn’t take long for them to get back into the swing of things after missing about two weeks of classes.
Many were eager to see their friends after days and weeks without power left them unable to call or text each other.
“It was very isolating,” said sophomore Michael Gowen, 15. “You couldn’t connect with your friends. I didn’t talk with my friends until I came back to school.”
Once back in the classroom, students swapped stories about their individual hardships.
The storm forced senior Amy White out of her Spring Lake residence and into a friend’s home, where she had to sleep on a blowup mattress in a small house with 12 people and seven dogs.
“It took a long time” to get back to normal, said White, 17.
“But it was worth it to be back at school.”