In the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, North Arlington is considered to be extremely fortunate. Aside from the expected flooding on River Road and the predicted loss of power, very few houses, if any, were left in a state of irreversible damage. The biggest change that many were forced to accommodate was the cancellation of school for the remaining week of October, an order which was issued by Governor Chris Christie.
Unfortunately, a large amount of cities and towns throughout New Jersey and the Northeast were not as auspicious. Although it has been well over a week since the arrival of Sandy, her mark has left a permanent scar in the communities of hundreds.
On Saturday, November 10th and Sunday, November 11th, a group of North Arlington High School students traveled down to Monmouth County, New Jersey to aid in the relief of Hurricane Sandy. On Saturday, seniors Katie Rouski, Amy Lin, and Stephanie Cervino, along with sophomore Matt Smykowski, arrived in Keyport, NJ to help those whose homes were affected by the storm. Signing up as volunteers through the town’s city hall, the North Arlington Vikings made their way to the area closest to the bay, since those homes were the ones who received damage directly from the waters.
The Vikings worked to clean up the debris accumulated during the hurricane. Lawns had been strewn with clumps of sand that once belonged to the Raritan Bay. Broken fences and pieces of plastic and paper had littered the backyards. Snapped tree branches were scattered in all possible directions. A garage had collapsed onto the car housed in it. One house became a host site for a dolphin statue that was once situated on the shore. Cleaning up the outside debris was not only a testament of the Vikings’ physical endurance, but it also became a test of mental strength. Toys that once belonged to the children of a family not much different than your own were found in the bushes of a stranger’s house. Photographs that once held permanent memories of a wedding day, a birthday party, or the immortalization of a loved one now departed became waterlogged and caked with mud, prematurely fading away the recollections widely cherished by a family now lost without keepsakes. Inside the house, families were forced to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Walls were ripped up to avoid internal water damage and costly furniture had to be discarded.
On Sunday, both Rouski and Lin were joined by fellow seniors Natalie LaBarbera and Mary Smykowski to aid in cleaning up the wreckage. Rather than going into the homes like the previous day to help those clean up the interior, they instead worked on throwing out the debris accumulated during the week of clean-up. Floorboards, kitchen cabinets, washing machines, television sets, books, clothes – everything that once made a home personal and comfortable, had to be disposed of. By the end of the day, the towering piles of items were gone. One neighborhood, once littered with damaged furniture and household items, was now clean and devoid of the debris collected from Hurricane Sandy.
While the physical reminder of the families’ losses has disappeared, the psychological aspect still remains. Some houses that were ravaged by the storm had been built by the families themselves. One apartment had a side of the building exposed. The pool that once belonged to another family has now disappeared from their backyard. A mobile home now rests on the front lawn of a stranger’s house. And still, many houses are still condemned, leaving families without a place to stay.
“No matter how bad it looks in pictures, it pales in comparison when you actually see it in person. Part of it comes from meeting the families of those affected, when you realize that years of their lives have been washed away,” recalls Rouski. “The other part that makes it so different is struggling through cleaning up one house and realizing that there are other people who are suffering this same fate. They may be suffering just as much, if not more, than this one family that you’re devoting your time to. The house you spent a great deal of time cleaning up and draining is just one house out of an entire block of damaged houses in a town filled with many more blocks. Keyport was just one of many towns in the tri-state area affected, and it is truly a shame that there just aren’t enough people helping these families in the ways they need most.”
Now that the hurricane has come and gone, there only remains the difficulty of resuming life back to an expected normalcy. The only way for these families to return back to their lives is to first clear away the wreckage. Due to the breadth of the damage, volunteers are always in demand. By devoting even just one weekend to helping the families overcome the strain of the hurricane, one offers a tremendous amount of help. A simple search online can guide a student to hundreds of organizations tailored to the relief of Hurricane Sandy. Any interested students can also contact Katie Rouski for information regarding the assistance of those affected in Keyport, NJ.
If pictures were worth a thousand words, the experience in witnessing the destruction and devastation of Hurricane Sandy first-hand will truly leave one speechless.