For how long were services disrupted?
It’s very important to distinguish between the disruption of these two of our senior centers and the disruption of our overall activities. We were providing full care to over 700 people a day all over the borough of Brooklyn. That was all coordinated out of this office. It was all run through the computer system and the telephone system of the staff that works in that office. We provided, last year, more than 70,000 trips to 4,000 seniors in the borough of Brooklyn. And all of that is coordinated out of this office.
Two senior centers were impacted ... but the impact is much greater: All 17 CUNY campuses and an additional 30 colleges, their work experience requirements are all coordinated out of this office as well. So were our adult literacy programs that take place in 30 different locations. None of that could function without the staff, the computer system, the telephone system and all the infrastructure of the organization. What’s amazing, phenomenal, extraordinary to the greatest degree is that within days, all of our programs and services except those two senior centers were fully functional.
How did that happen?
It happened through a combination of the amazing resiliency and dedication of our staff, who worked around the clock, and the implementation of advanced technology. We fortunately had appropriate backups of our entire computer system. Besides the offsite backups, our comptroller met me in the office the day before the hurricane and we — literally with our hands — carried out our supplemental backup computer. We set up remote desktops. Any-one who had an internet connection was given instructions to connect to a remote desktop computer system, and all the functionality they had at their desk in their offices was available to them.
How long did that take?
It was within a few days. At the same time, a cloud-based telephone system was installed. We had the same extensions, the same voice-mail systems - to a caller from the outside, it was almost invisible.
What was the impact on individuals?
The population that was immediately impacted was our home-care clients. Many of them who were in the hurricane zone had no electricity, no telephone, no elevators. It was a process of reestablishing contacts and restoring services. ... The day after the hurricane, the Department of the Aging, that deals with City Meals on Wheels, was there. We made arrangements with caterers, and in the streets, or in senior citizens’ housing developments that gave us space, we immediately began distributing food. Any of the seniors who attended our senior centers who were depending on us for their daily meals were able to get food.
The Department of the Aging reached out to us and said that we should spend whatever was necessary to get our senior centers up and running, and whatever FEMA will eventually reimburse us, they would cover the difference.
And that’s just what we did. Our Haber House senior center, the one on West 24th Street, within a few weeks was fully operational again. For several days we had had cleaning crews coming in around the clock, removing all the destroyed furniture and equipment, sanitizing the place and replacing kitchen equipment and table and chairs so that we could begin serving food again.
How did the staff remain so motivated in the face of such a crisis?
The staff are amazingly dedicated people who care to their depths about the clients they serve. Their response was extraordinary. Everyone gave all the time and effort they possibly could for 18 months, functioning in temporary, makeshift, cramped, locations until our offices could be rebuilt. It wasn’t just a few days of hardship.
At this point, it’s hard for people to remember the devastation, especially if they don’t live in an area that was affected.
Those living in Coney Island were all living in apartment buildings - developments — so they were without electricity, heat, hot water. That’s bad enough. But their actual apartments and furniture were not affected. People who were living in Sea Gate, on the other hand, were totally destroyed and devastated.
One of our temporary sites was a trailer that we established for the Sea Gate community. This was funded by a grant from the Robin Hood Foundation and subsequently supported by the Superstorm Sandy block grant. Within a week or two we had several donated services functioning there. There were two legal aid organizations that made their attorneys avail-able for emergency assistance. There were health professionals who were based in there until this past October, that were working with the local community to help address the trauma and emotional crises that people were experiencing.
People lost their homes, their possessions; they lost all their memories of decades, of their whole life — everything of sentimental value for them. So there was depression, there was despair, and many people were having tremendous difficulty coping.
Let’s say that someone is 85 or 90 and a Holocaust survivor, and that person loses everything.
To the credit of the [Holocaust] Claims Conference, they made special funds available for emergency assistance specifically for Holocaust survivors. And they also made an alliance between us and the German consulate, which provided some funds, and also some private sector support from two German-based organizations that enabled us to address the needs of the Holocaust survivors who were directly impacted by the hurricane.
In any case where financial assistance is necessary — besides the fact that our caseworkers, our social workers are involved — in order to responsibly approve allocation of funds for emergencies for families, it requires my approval and also of our board, a special committee that reviews and approves these requests. So there were several of layers of review for those types of relief responses.
How is the Greater Coney Island community doing overall, two years on?
Two years later there are still businesses that have been impacted. There are many, many homeowners who remain impacted. And unfortunately, the Build It Back program until now has not been functional.
To the great credit of the new city council member representing the Coney Island area, Mark Treyger — who has taken leadership in Superstorm Sandy response — he urged the council speaker to create a special committee in the city council for Superstorm Sandy relief efforts and was appointed chair of that. He was elected in November and took office in January and convened the first-ever community-based meeting of the City Council to hold a special hearing about the problems in the NYCHA developments in Coney Island, where the heat, the hot water, the basic functionalities were either not restored on a timely basis or were still problematic.
How do people live for two years without basic housing facilities?
Many people had to relocate. There were people that couldn’t, and there were temporary generators, temporary heaters were installed. There were houses that were never rebuilt, there were houses where people were not reimbursed for money they borrowed in order to do the rebuilding.
Some say that Superstorm Sandy was a confluence of forces that may not come together again, so no offshore barriers or other structural protection is needed. Do you agree?
Absolutely not. The danger, especially to the Sea Gate-Coney Island area, is immense. In 1991–1992 there was a Nor’easter that did tremendous damage. Afterward, thanks to Congressman Jerrold Nadler and other elected officials, the Army Corps of Engineers built the necessary jetties and seawalls that protected this community from any kind of devastating flooding for all these years. But that protection was destroyed during Sandy. It requires a tremendous amount of engineering expertise to develop a system that’s comprehensive and should not allow one area to be damaged while protecting a second area. Before Sandy, plans had been made and funds allocated to install additional jetties and seawalls protecting Coney Island and Sea Gate. Unfortunately, there were bureaucratic delays. If they had been implemented, then a lot of this destruction would not have happened.
If there would be another storm now, the damage would be many, many times greater than it was [during Sandy], because now there’s absolutely no protection.
How would you sum up the experience of the JCC of Greater Coney Island since Sandy in 2012?
With a quick anecdote: A few weeks after the storm, there was a meeting of high-level officials representing city agencies who were involved in community response and I, representing an organization in a community that was affected, was invited. As I walked into the meeting, I was introduced as “Rabbi Wiener from the Jewish Community Council in Greater Coney Island that was destroyed.”
Immediately I responded that our offices were destroyed, but the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island was fully operational and functional. And that was reality. The organization, its mission, its dedication, its vibrancy were strengthened as a result of the experience.
