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Men dispose of shopping carts full of food damaged by Storm Sandy at the Fairway supermarket in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. The food was contaminated by flood waters that rose to approximately four feet in the store during the storm. (Seth Wenig / AP Photo)

 

Days after Sandy swept through, the Brooklyn neighborhood remains a shambles, with some residents going without food and shelter, small and big businesses alike closed down, the Red Hook Initiative in the unfamiliar role of disaster relief--and many decrying an inadequate FEMA response.
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Alisa Pizarro and her 21-year-old daughter climb 14 flights of pitch-dark stairs, with flashlights and pepper spray, at 80 Dwight St.
 
"In case anybody tries to attack us," Pizarro says. "It's been too long already without lights."
 
They sleep as still as rails, with three blankets each. And they're lucky to have them. Many Red Hook residents go without, like homeless Vietnam veteran Daniel Rodriguez, who has been in the neighborhood all his life, but now lives in his car. Today, rent was due, but Pizarro hasn't paid, and she suspects many others in Brooklyn's largest housing project won't either. "I don't want to," she says. "They're not giving me the necessities I need. I'm not going to pay." She misses her 2-year-old grandson, who is staying with his father in Gowanus, because the man has heat.
 
In some windows of the Red Hook Houses, lights could be seen, but Red Hook Initiative Director Sandy Brockwell assured me that even in those homes, there isn't gas or water. Official estimates of residents run from 5,000 to 6,000, but locals guess the actual number could be upwards of 10,000. RHI facilitates programs for local youth, but now finds itself in the murky work of emergency management.
 
"I don't think we ever imagined ourselves getting into the business of disaster relief," says Brockwell. Their building, which sits inland on Hicks Street, sustained no water damage, and retained electricity. Just after the storm, Brockwell says, "people just started showing up."
 
The office is packed--cops, mayor's office flacks, medical staff, lawyers, and volunteers, helping the displaced with injuries, prescriptions, FEMA forms or food stamps. Some are eating from plastic containers of homemade pasta salad or soup. The overflow go to the neighboring church after dark outside, where a nine-piece brass band is playing jolly music in the cold for an audience of three or four. Donation boxes strewn with clothes and shoes are toppled over in the street.
 
"You can already feel the tension," Brockwell says. "People are starting to feel abandoned and they don't feel safe for obvious reasons. They need something to look forward to."
 
In the five minutes I'm speaking with Brockwell, she is approached by four different staff members--one man shows her a photo of the 180 Home Depot heaters RHI has purchased and needs to pick up and ferry to the Red Hook Houses, but such assets will need police escorts. "We can't send volunteers in there alone for safety reasons," she says. Some 3,700 volunteers worked blackout zones today, NPR reported.
 
RHI's good work is the talk of the water-surrounded neighborhood whose streets and docks were the settings of On the Waterfront and a recent Spike Lee film, Red Hook Summer. While the 1990s brought drugs and violence to the area--which is isolated from the MTA subway system--including the death of a school principal who caught a stray bullet, the waterfront has been revitalized first by artists and small businesses, and then by major retailers Fairway grocery and IKEA. Both initially were unpopular with neighbors, and Fairway admits on its website that opening a store there was "just plain nuts."
 
 
Source: The Daily Beast | Allison Yarrow
 
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The Oracle And DJ I Rock Jesus Presents Call Of Duty: Black OPS II Mixtape. The Joint Will Drop On November 13


 

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