Brooklyn spirit is like no other. It helps us to ride rough times and emerge at the other end, if not completely mended, then at least facing the future standing tall.
A year ago this week, as excited Halloween munchkins put the finishing touches to their costumes, the storm of the century hacked the borough apart like a ghoul with an axe to grind. Killer gusts claimed lives, property, and power, and turned entire communities into cauldrons, while paralyzing our trains and subways for the first time in their 109-year-old history.
Hurricane Sandy’s toll was devastating. And its painful memories are a constant reminder of Mother Nature’s random, pitiless fury.
Seven Brooklynites lost their lives. Lorraine Gore, 90, and SenPo Hua, 87, drowned in their Coney Island apartments. Sheepshead Bay residents Cy Schoenfeld, 72, and Richard Krins, 67, were found dead in their homes. Jessie Streich-Kest and Jacob Vogelman, both 24, were killed by a toppling tree while walking a dog in Ditmas Park. And an unidentified man washed up dead on a Gravesend street.
Survivors had the arduous and heartbreaking task of picking up the shattered pieces of the multi-billion-dollar trail of wreckage. But Brooklyn grit isn’t a Hollywood invention.
Here the tough get going when the going gets tough, and hard-hit boroughites swiftly ditched their justifiable laments and got down to the business of rebuilding their lives and communities with a vigor that left those of us who covered the super storm and its aftermath speechless and humbled.
Ordinary people rose to extraordinary heights. Heroically mindless of their own crippling losses, they rushed to assist and support bereft neighbors and strangers who had lost everything, and for whom time had come to a horrifying standstill. But the days, weeks, and months ahead would show that all was not lost, as Uncle Sam bumbled and left Brooklyn largely to fend for itself.
Our industrious rescue workers, restaurateurs, school communities, civic groups, and individuals united in a remarkable show of solidarity, and demonstrated that spirit trumps lethargy every time.
They set up makeshift command centers. They collected donations. They trucked essential supplies directly to storm victims. They proved that even when Brooklyn is down, it is never out.
Yet, deep scars etch the borough a year later, despite all the Herculean efforts. Some families had no recourse but to relocate and start again. Many businesses are still wobbly. And our waterfront communities — defenseless prisoners shackled under the force of Goliath waves unleashed from a frenzied ocean — are making a slow comeback.
Some catastrophes are just too overwhelming to contemplate. Thankfully, ruminating and hand-wringing are not Brooklyn’s strong points. It is far too preoccupied with fixing what is broken and barreling onward — with a smile.
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