Gawkers head to New York’s storm-ravaged neighborhoods
NEW YORK (AP) — Garbage trucks, hulking military vehicles and mud-caked cars move slowly through a Staten Island waterfront neighborhood still reeling from Superstorm Sandy’s storm surge. Then comes an outlier: a spotless SUV with three passengers peering out windows at a mangled home choked with sea grass.
Residents recognize the occupants right away. They’re disaster tourists, people drawn to the scene of a tragedy to glimpse the pictures they’ve seen on television come to life.
Two weeks after the superstorm socked the region, cleanup continues in New York and New Jersey, which bore the brunt of the destruction. At its peak, the storm knocked out power to 8.5 million in 10 states, and some during a later nor’easter. About 73,000 utility customers in New York and New Jersey remained without power late Sunday, most of them on Long Island.
But the storm didn’t just bring darkness and despair; it also brought the gawkers.
“It’s a little annoying,” said Chris Nasella, who paused as he finished cleaning up a home reduced to a shell on the first floor. “By the same token, I would do it, too. I don’t think anyone wouldn’t want to look at boats that are picked up and left on the streets. As long as you don’t get a kick out of it, it’s an amazing thing.”
There weren’t many tourists in Nasella’s neighborhood on Saturday. Cleanup crews had done some extensive work. The neighborhood is only accessible through streets clogged with idled cars in gas lines and traffic made deliberate by still-powerless traffic signals.
But they left an impression.
“The gawking was amazing last week,” said Joanne McClenin, whose home was filled with water five feet high on the night Sandy came ashore. “It was kind of offensive as a homeowner, because I felt violated.”
As the power outages on Long Island drag on, New Yorkers railed Sunday against the utility that has lagged behind others in restoring power, criticizing its slow pace as well as a dearth of information.
Separately, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano visited with disaster-relief workers Sunday in Staten Island’s Midland Beach neighborhood, which is still devastated two weeks after Sandy hit.
The lack of power restoration for a relative few in the densely populated region at the heart of the storm reinforced Sandy’s fractured effect on the area: tragic and vicious to some, merely a nuisance to others.
