Marines begin Hurricane Sandy relief work in Queens and Staten Island

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Marines begin Hurricane Sandy relief work in Queens and Staten Island

• By JOSH MARGOLIN, SALLY GOLDENBERG and LEONARD GREENE
• Last Updated: 5:05 AM, November 5, 2012
• Posted: 2:06 AM, November 5, 2012

They’re storming the beaches!

A wave of Marines hit the most hurricane-battered sections of Queens and Staten Island yesterday to bring much-needed assistance and supplies to increasingly desperate residents.

Armed with high-powered water pumps and sophisticated surveying equipment, the Leathernecks, aided by Navy sailors, began their attack on floodwaters from Rockaway Beach in Queens to Midland Beach on Staten Island.

“It’s what Marines do. They just go running,” said Marine Sgt. Justin Armstrong, who returned from Afghanistan about two months ago.


Reuters

Mark Baronowski helps clear out the sandcarpeted living room of a beachfront home in the devastated Jersey Shore borough of Bay Head yesterday, six days after Hurricane Sandy sent a tidal surge barreling into the community.


“It’s pretty nasty,” he said of the Rockaway wreckage. “It’s a lot of sewage. Pretty much anything you’d flush down the toilet, that lays on the ground, that’s trash. It’s pretty vile stuff.”

His work was appreciated.

“I was just speechless when I saw them,” said Priscilla Smalls, 53, who lives in the Ocean Bay Houses in the Rockaways’ Arverne section.

“I’ve never seen Marines anywhere before, let alone over here in the projects. It’s a great, cool thing. We need the big guns after what happened here. I’ve seen the National Guard, but the Marines are a whole different thing.”

Marine engineers did a block-by-block assessment of Staten Island’s Father Capodanno Boulevard to determine the manpower and equipment required for today, when 50 to 100 more corps members are expected to come ashore.

Meanwhile, Marines and Navy sailors were hard at work with hammers and hacksaws, doing any construction and cleanup they could.

“It was wonderful to see them,” said Jessie Gonzalez, 34, whose home on nearby Patterson Avenue was flooded after the storm.

“They gave us supplies, water and food. It makes us feel like we’re actually getting help now. At least we feel safer with their presence.”

Residents felt similar relief in the Rockaways, where engineer and utilities Marines from the 8th Engineer Support Battalion drove up from Camp Lejeune, NC.

They started working at 5 a.m. at the Ocean Bay Houses with 150-gallon-per-minute pumps in what was likely to be a weeks-long effort to remove the chest-high water from the basements of the complex’s 34 buildings.

Critics have complained that the National Guard’s talents are being wasted. Instead of providing security against looters and directing traffic, they say, it’s been ordered to do little more than give out food and blankets.

Sources said the Guard’s role has been a source of contention between Mayor Bloomberg, who believes police have the situation under control, and Gov. Cuomo, who wants to blanket the area with the citizen soldiers.

“This thing goes back to the beginning of the storm,” said a source working with city and state officials.

“The mayor downplayed it, and so he needs to keep maintaining the optics that it’s not as bad by downplaying it. Bringing in the National Guard says that it’s a major disaster because it is. It’s bad. It’s really bad. And Cuomo knows it.”

Councilman James Sanders (D-Queens) griped, “You’ve got several people who have had their houses totally robbed. The police were hopelessly overwhelmed in the first few days.”

In other developments:

* City officials warned that temperatures could dip below freezing tonight and urged storm victims to seek refuge with friends or family or at government centers.

* The NYPD sent scores of cops to storm-ravaged areas to stand sentry in clusters of three or four to ward off looters. It also erected light towers to provide electricity to residents needing to charge phones or other devices.

* Most schools are set to reopen today. Students were urged to dress warmly because some facilities are still without heat.

* Trash is being picked up, but regular schedules on Staten Island and in the Rockaways are impossible given the enormity of the debris, officials said. Trash from Breezy Point, Queens, was dumped in the Jacob Riis Park parking lot, sources said.

* Yankee Stadium has been converted to a storing house for donations and supplies for the National Guard to distribute.

* Retired NYPD cop Michael Dyer became just one more example of New Yorkers’ altruistic spirit, driving a truck packed with 300 blankets from his home in Omaha, Neb., Saturday night to the city’s needy yesterday.

* Four police stations in Coney Island, Rockaway and on the Lower East Side were severely damaged by the storm. One of them, Brooklyn’s 60th Precinct station, was evacuated. It’s operating out of a temporary headquarters vehicle out front.

* City sanitation worker Michael Lewery was zapped by electricity yesterday while removing debris on Staten Island. The 13-year veteran was taken to Staten Island University North Hospital, where he was in stable condition, the department said.

* The death toll in the city remained at 40, officials said.

Additional reporting by Kate Kowsh, Reuven Fenton, Jennifer Bain and Jessica Simeone

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