By David Cruz
NJ Today
Six months after, Hoboken shows little outward sign of Hurricane Sandy’s fury. Commuters are back on their normal schedule, and except for a few businesses that didn’t come back and some street repairs that are a constant here, Hoboken looks pretty much the same as it did before the storm. Mayor Dawn Zimmer was at the governor’s announcement today, hoping to hear good news for some of her residents who suddenly find themselves in official FEMA flood zones.
“We’re an urban environment. We cannot raise our homes up on pilings. And the way the national flood insurance works, that’s the money that they give. So we need help with raising up those mechanicals,” Zimmer said. “We need incentives for that and it sounds like that’s what’s built into this as a potential grant opportunity. I’ll be looking forward to getting more details and putting it out to my community.”
It was Halloween when freelance photographer Chris Costa got an early morning phone call from the editors at Hoboken Patch. Get into town as soon as possible, they said. It turned out to be the most memorable two weeks of his life.
“It was surreal. I don’t wanna go as far as to say apocalyptic but it almost felt that way because I was one of the first ones out with the mayor and OEM director ,” Costa said. “Once we got the National Guard trucks then we could actually go into the water. That’s when you really started to see the devastation that it had caused. We found a few people trying to get out and assess damage and stuff. We saw a lot of people trying to trudge through the water, riding a bicycle through water, a few people. I mean it was really surreal to see how much devastation came into Hoboken.”
But Sandy also gave the Mile Square City a chance to showcase the best of its citizens. Lifelong Hobokenite Perry Belfiore was lucky. His house uptown stayed dry and the lights stayed on.
”But it became very obvious very quickly that a lot of the town was basically without power,” Belfiore said. “People on Garden Street that had power not only put out charging stations, but they put out hot food. They had homemade cookies. It was a celebratory event.”
There is still work to be done here. This HOPES senior center downtown looks pretty much as it did when we visited here six months ago. City officials tell us work on the seniors’ meeting room should begin by mid-June, which will bring a lot of seniors back to the place where they spent their days with friends before Sandy changed all that, six months ago today.