In conversation at the Nov. 13 forum for leaders of New Jersey’s long-term recovery groups (left to right): Presenter Greg Strader, Executive Director, Be Ready Alliance Coordinating for Emergencies, Pensacola, Fla.; the Rev. Dr. Larry Potts, Chair, Southwest Long-Term Recovery Group, and Senior Minister, Franklinville, N.J., United Methodist Church, and CWS Emergency Response Specialist Sandra Kennedy-Owes of Mobile, Ala. Photo: Carol Fouke-Mpoyo
TOMS RIVER, N.J. – A mid-November forum for leaders of New Jersey long-term recovery groups provided an opportunity for Church World Service to check in with them on how far their Superstorm Sandy recovery has come in the state – and how far it has to go.
These community-based groups have helped hundreds of Sandy-affected households access the resources they needed to repair, rebuild and/or elevate their wind- and water-ravaged homes.
But as many as 12,000 New Jersey households are still displaced, and nearly 200 more are making their first call for help every month.
More often than not, LTRGs are disaster survivors’ first point of contact and/or last resort, helping them piece together donated materials, volunteer labor and other private resources to complete their recovery when their personal resources and grants from federal and state recovery programs don’t stretch far enough.
For example, the Ocean County LTRG was the last resort for Charles and Angelina Lorenzo and their three children, displaced from their Toms River home since Sandy made landfall on Oct. 29, 2012. They exhausted all personal resources, worked painstakingly through the time-consuming, complex and often changeable gamut of recovery programs and still came up short, unable to finish the rehabilitation and elevation of their home.
The LTRG stepped forward to help the Lorenzo family finish the job, stretching $15,000 in cash with volunteer labor provided through the LTRG’s construction and volunteer management partner, UMCOR’s A Future with Hope. The house was dedicated on Sandy’s second anniversary, and the family hopes to move back home before Thanksgiving.
Senior Disaster Case Manager Sarah Ruane reviews a case file at the Ocean County Long-Term Recovery Group’s offices. Photo: Carol Fouke-Mpoyo / CWS
While some LTRGs are wrapping up, others face years’ more work
Several New Jersey LTRGs expect to complete their Superstorm Sandy work within the next three to nine months, and are asking, “What next?” At the Nov. 13 forum, sponsored by New Jersey Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, CWS Emergency Response Specialist Sandra Kennedy-Owes led a session for these groups.
She reviewed proper shut-down procedures and explored possible next steps, such as forming a Community Organization Active in Disaster or other ongoing disaster preparedness and response group.
Among LTRGs expecting to close soon is the Southwest LTRG, serving Gloucester and Salem counties. “It’s been such an honor” to help Sandy survivors recover, said the Rev. Dr. Larry Potts, the group’s chairperson and pastor of the Franklinville United Methodist Church.
Potts said that when he was elected LTRG chair in February 2013, about three months after the historic storm, he “knew nothing” about helping survivors recover. In short order, he was able to take CWS’s Recovery Tools and Training Workshop, where he learned the elements and steps of recovery.
“I couldn’t have done it without that training,” he said, along with additional on-site training by CWS and UMCOR, CWS U.S. disaster response webinars, and ongoing mentoring by CWS emergency response specialists. The Southwest LTRG also received a $5,000 start-up grant from CWS.
The LTRG identified 57 households needing the group’s help, Potts said, and all but one has completed their recovery.
But while some LTRGs are almost done, others – including those in hardest-hit Ocean and Monmouth counties – see three, five, even 10 more years of work ahead of them. And they warn that work will come to a grinding halt unless there is an extension of several large public and private recovery programs currently scheduled to end between January and June 2015.
Especially important is funding to help displaced homeowners continue to cover their rent and mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure until they can get back home, said Sue Marticek, Director of the Ocean County Long-Term Recovery Group, based in Toms River.
She said she also is “advocating at every turn” for banks to freeze mortgage payments and for insurance companies to pay their policy holders what they are due. “People say to us, ‘I would never be asking for charity money if my insurance company had returned what I had paid in during the last 25 years,’” Marticek said.
Ocean County LTRG has hundreds of displaced households waiting for help, but only six disaster case managers. “We just can’t get to waiting cases fast enough,” Marticek said. “We have to focus on how we can get the next batch of people home.”
There was no LTRG in Ocean County before Superstorm Sandy hit. CWS’s first “Recovery Tools and Training” “educated the community that had no clue about what an LTRG is and does, or what happens in disaster recovery – it’s a long haul,” Marticek said.