Hurricane Sandy - New York still a ghost area

A gorgeous beach turned ghost area. The Rockaways in Queens - one of the places hit hardest by hurricane Sandy two and a half months ago - still in shambles today. Miles and miles of devastated businesses, residential buildings, and houses like this one, a place some family probably used to call home, now almost literally hanging by a thread, with almost zero chance of ever being rebuilt. Few locals on the collapsed boardwalk - most of them in dire need of help. This man - who chose to remain anonymous due to government-related work - survived hurricane Katrina. His hopes of recovery post Sandy are meager. “Ain’t never gonna move. You still go to parts of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississipi - the ones that got hit with Katrina - a lot of that area ain’t been touched yet”. After sandy hit in late October, he spent over a month with no electricity, heat or hot water in 30 degree weather. SOUNDBITE: anonymous local (speaking English): “Fema? Three times I filled out an application, and three times I got ‘sorry’. Politicians have their priorities. The folks here that put them in office are the last on their list. Money looks better in your pocket than it does spending it on something that may get washed away again”. Retired local Roberta Hoff - currently rebuilding her walls, floors and stairs - says the destruction after the hurricane has been immense. “We don’t have the movie theatre. We don’t have the hospital - it’s gone. The banks are finally opening now - it’s two and a half months. It looks like after a war, Afghanistan or something”. And most of the help in hurricane-affected areas has come from volunteers. “I didn’t see too much of the Red Cross, to be truthful.” Volunteers who have often been affected by Sandy themselves - like Aiman Youssef from Staten Island. “Actually it was like a foot on top of it. That’s how much it was, the water here.” His house, deemed unsafe after the hurricane, is about to be demolished. “The only thing we need is the funds, the funds are not there. To get help. We’re getting like 10 percent, where are we going to get the 90 percent? We need a check from god, that’s what we need”. For a month and a half Aiman lived in this tent - where he also set up a help center for the community. "Do you still have a lot of people coming here today?” “A lot. A lot. 600-700 a day.” “600-700 people a day?” “Yes, yes.” All of these people - victims of Sandy. “Everybody around here, if you go up to them, they’ll tell you the same thing - they’ll say ‘they handed me a sandwich and a blanket - and I was in water up to my chest, and they said - hey, see you later! Oh, by the way, I am not allowed to exit the truck!’” Occupy Sandy, a child of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has been a big part of the recovery effort too, even praised by the NYPD. “What we have is a lot of people coming here and not knowing where to turn, and some of them are in tears. It’s very hard to tell them that help is coming. You hear all this talk about the 9 billion, the 51 billion. That would be a big help if it actually got to communities”. While politicians seem to have perfected the skill of arguing over how much cash to spend on relief aid - getting money and help to ordinary people who need it right now - is clearly a skill that is yet to be learnt.