Hurricane Sandy: The misery goes on

When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Eastern Seaboard last October, killing 181 people, said Perry Chiaramonte in FoxNews.com, few residents suspected they’d still be waiting a year later “to get their lives back.” But only a small fraction of the $60 billion in federal aid has reached the people who most need help. Hindered by “low-balling insurance agents, FEMA workers who won’t listen, and a host of rules governing the aid they desperately need,” tens of thousands of homeowners in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have yet to begin rebuilding. Take New Jersey resident Bernie Neuhaus, who’s been living in a rented trailer on his property and working two jobs to meet his expenses. FEMA, he says, tells him something different every time he calls. “There are no straight answers,” Neuhaus says. In New Jersey’s Ocean County, said Mark Di Ionnoin the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger,26,000 homeowners have yet to return. In the hardest-hit towns, “mildewed Halloween decorations” still hang in the windows of abandoned homes.

Perhaps we should think twice about rebuilding every home, said The New York Times in an editorial. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that climate change has increased the chances of a Sandy-like disaster happening again in New York City by 50 percent. Superstorm Sandy—which caused $68 billion worth of damage to more than 650,000 homes—“was just a taste of what’s coming as the earth’s temperatures rise and oceans expand into human territory.” TV ad slogans notwithstanding, the reality is that we are not “stronger than the storm,” said Julie O’Connor in the Star-Ledger. With sea levels rising along the Jersey coast at an accelerating rate, “to ignore the science on this is crazy.”

Scientists actually disagree about whether climate change will produce more hurricanes, said Bryan Walsh in Time.com. “But here’s something we know for sure: 123 million Americans, more than a third of the entire country, live in coastal counties.” About 3.7 million of them live within just a few feet of the sea at high tide—and it’s indisputable that sea levels are rising. So are Americans prepared to pay $60 billion every five or 10 years to rebuild after storms? If not, we need to start moving people and property away from the coast. “We’ll pay the price—one way or another.”

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