Storm Chronicles: Superstorm Sandy Five Years Later

by Patricia A. Miller

BAYVILLE, NJ - The fear started to rise about five days before Sandy hit home.

The dread increased with each passing day. Unbelievably, the monster storm that everyone had hoped would swing out to sea did not. It was going to make a nearly unprecedented turn and whip back towards the west, towards the Jersey coast.

We didn't live on the oceanfront. We didn't live where waves routinely break. We lived across the street from the Toms River in a small section of Bayville called Toms River Shores. The closest any flooding had ever come before Sandy was back in the December 1991 storm. The water came up to the blue spruce at the front of the house, just 10 feet from the garage door. Then it receded.

By the Friday before Sandy, Berkeley police were cruising our streets, announcing evacuation orders. We needed to be out by noon on Monday. A volunteer from one of the local fire departments paid a visit that Friday night. He asked us to sign papers acknowledging that no one could save us if we didn't evacuate. We signed.

Trees were already falling like ten pins in Pine Beach and power lines on the way to my son's safe house inland in Toms River. Little did we know it would be our home for the next seven months.

I called my next door neighbor the following morning, to see how our neighborhood had made out. He's a Berkeley Township police officer. When he finished his night shift and went home, the water was up to his gun belt, he said.

We fared better than most. There was 14 inches of water in the garage. The freezer and everything else was floating. Inside, maybe eight inches. The hardwood floors had warped. The carpeting squished when we walked on it.

I brought over a steam vac. I naively thought I could just suck up the floodwater. I plugged in it. Within 30 seconds a little flame shot out of the outlet. The fire department came and shut off the electricity and gas.

The next seven months were filled with grabbing any contractor I could to make repairs. Unfortunately, contractors who had never seen anything like Sandy had more business than they could handle. So they hired anyone they could. Some stole items from our closets.

Wiring had to be replaced, sheetrock ripped out four feet up, all the floors torn out. You could see the crawl space from the living room joists.

Seven months later we finally came home. The kitchen was not finished and neither were a number of other areas that needed work.

I didn't realize then that the toughest days were still ahead of me. Since my house was more than 50 percent damaged, it would have to be elevated. No ifs, ands or buts.

I applied for a RREM grant and was put on a waitlist. I was approved about a year later and grateful to get the grant.

Then Tom's health started to decline. He was in and out of Community many times for several years. He died four days after Christmas in 2015.

I was still reeling from his death. But I knew I had to get the house elevated and soon. My neighbor across the street found a house lifting company and a reliable contractor. If you still need your house lifted, go with DeVooght. If you need a contractor, go with Brick-based Bost Construction.

I moved out at the end of July 2016, into a rental home. I wasn't prepared for the myriad of township inspections during the elevation process. Some of them had to be appealed because the township erred in several decisions.

The months crept past, as I attempted to make my way through the extremely complicated RREM program. I finally came home in January 2017. I ended up in the hospital twice, once at the end of January and again in late March, with what appeared to be mini-strokes.

I have no doubt the health problems were related to Sandy stress and losing my companion of 16 years.

I wrote a story a week ago about a survey of Sandy survivors compiled by the New Jersey Research Project.Five years after Sandy, 22 percent have not been able to return home. It also included profiles of several Sandy-impacted residents.

I was strangely comforted to realize that so many have had a hard time working their way through the tortuous RREM process. Strangely comforted to learn that others were stressed to the max.

"My spirit and family kept me going, but my body began to give out under the daily pressures of living in grief, new economic hardship and my displacement from my home," said Brick resident Tricia McAvoy.

RREM counselors have been calling for the past few months, urging me to prepare for the "final inspection" of my home and the reconciliation of all the paperwork. One sent me 11 attachments of various forms that have to be completed.

I have a very demanding job. RREM paperwork is tough to handle. And I'm so tired. But I have to get going.

And every time I hear about storms and hurricanes that could possibly hit us, every time the wind starts to whine through the utility wires, the dread starts again, even though my house is higher up in the air now.

Photos by Patricia A. Miller