(Gallery is up here! Donations can be sent here! The images are huge and have not been resized. I am limiting the amount of images for now while we deal with the insurance company and FEMA(who hasn't really been helpful, neither has the Red Cross.) Due to power issues with the nor'easter I'm not direct linking too many images at the moment. More images might be uploaded later too.)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy our house suffered a large amount of damage. Things are really difficult at the moment. Gas is hard to come by and food is so much more expensive after the hurricane.
The extent of the damage to our house is great. Everything on the first floor that survived Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene, did not survive Sandy.
All of the furniture is a complete loss, such as the couch and table, the refrigerator which we got this year was tipped onto its back and is currently laying on the new pots and pans we got after Irene. Our stove was about 20 days old, we just got it. It had water in the top of it. The air conditioner which was on top of the table was on the floor. The water made the entire thing float.
This isn’t even mentioning the food. All of the food in the house (about two months worth) is garbage. Trash.
That isn’t even the worst of it. We are lucky the house didn’t explode as we weren’t able to turn off the gas to the house. The house has shifted on its foundation by a few inches and there are some major cracks in the foundation. All of this has to be repaired. I’m not even at the worst part yet.
Aleks’ grandfather lived next door. His house lifted up with the surge and floated. All of the lawn furniture and even the lawn mower have been crushed by the house. His electric wheelchair is gone. Everything in that house is gone. Everything. He is 83 years old and he lost everything.
The house is so bad that we can’t even enter it. The fire department checked it out during the storm and even the local police know about it.
His house is so badly damaged that it was condemned.
There was a boat in the front yard and a paddle boat in the back yard. The entire boat yard floated and is blocking one of the streets. Not to mention the two downed trees on that street. We can’t even get trucks down to our road.
Our neighbors have it very bad too. This is how things look all over our street.
The sad thing is, FEMA has been very slow with their response. They were quick with Irene. The Red Cross is apparently here but we haven’t seen them at all. Everytime we’ve seen the national guard… they’ve just been standing around! This is chaos.
The devastation is really bad and we don’t really know what to do. The insurance deductible because it was a Hurricane is $20,000 which is money we don’t have. We don’t know how much we will get from FEMA nor do we know of other ways to get some help for the costs.
Aleks grandfather’s house has to be torn down and we can’t afford that. The damage is far too extensive for us this time. Irene we recovered from ourselves. Hurricane Sandy… we cannot recover from.
Sadly, I have to ask for donations to help. This damage is too great and far too bad. Anything would help us. I’ve opened my paypal for direct donations as the way it looks we might not even see the Red Cross. At this point I don’t know how things will turn out. Things feel pretty hopeless right now.
Anything you can give would be a huge help. Anything that would be left over would go towards helping our neighbors recover too.
Please donate to us here.
Thank you all so much for the help.
Joseph Miller / Kohaku
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