Hurricane Sandy ended what I knew as my “normal life”. In just a few short days, my house was destroyed, many of my possessions were damaged and my entire neighborhood was brought to the ground. There’s no feeling quite like losing your house, and it’s hard to explain to those who it hasn’t happened to because it’s such a unique experience.
American Red Cross to the rescue
It’s worth noting that for anyone looking for help to recover from Hurricane Sandy, the American Red Cross long term recovery team are offering lots of help and support to those affected by the hurricane. The Red Cross managers will meet with the affected persons one on one to discuss what can be done to improve their state of living. Once the manager has studied the situation, they will get in contact with relevant organisations and social services to determine how to best help the person in question. In certain cases the Red Cross may provide financial assistance to those who need urgent financial help to help repair their home.
Superstorm Sandy, One Year Later
The Red Cross team are also sending in recovery specialists who come into storm impacted areas to help the general community out by building preparedness and resiliency programs for future storms or other natural disasters that are likely to affect the area.
Thankfully as I had very supportive parents I didn’t need to use the Red Cross Recovery service, allowing those that really needed them to use their services.
Moving back home
After my home was destroyed, I took a few weeks to stay at my parents’ house. They were really good to me, and promised to put me up for as long as necessary. They also helped me start to look at building contractors who would be capable of taking on the job of repairing my house. It was a lengthy process because I had to contact with the insurance company, but eventually I was ready to go and began look for a company.
I started by looking in some of the help brochures that were delivered to many of the victims of Hurricane Sandy. The brochures provided some links to reputable companies that would be willing to take on recovery projects. I found a company I liked the look of, gave them a call and scheduled them to take a look at the house.
Within the next couple of weeks we started planning on exactly what needed to be repaired, and the builders started mapping out an action plan to get the work done. I was totally honest with them about what I wanted to be done and they were realistic and provided accurate time restrictions about how long the job would take to complete.
Who knew that New Jersey General Building Contractors were so kind!
Every step of the way, the modular building contractors I found through Rebuild New Jersey were really helpful, and supportive about the entire project. They understand that I was in a fragile place, and wasn’t in the best mind-set I could be in. I felt that they took this into account, and they were really nice, courteous and considerate towards me.
I slowly began seeing my house began to take form again, and it was an amazing moment seeing my home being rebuilt. Most of the neighborhood was being rebuilt at similar times, and it was a huge community effort rebuilding our lives, our neighborhood and our families. I was lucky to have such a great construction team on hand, and I really don’t think I could have done it without them. They were so helpful and understood my circumstances perfectly.
If I had to give advice to anyone looking to rebuild their lives from storm disaster, I would recommend getting to it as soon as possible. It can be tempting to put it off and say you’ll deal with it another day, but the longer you put it off the worse you begin to feel and it will just keep dragging on for a long time. Get the help of friends or family if you feel that you can’t manage by yourself and this should help to make the whole process easier. I know I couldn’t’ have done it without my family, and they were my main source of support – Thanks to all who helped me out, I couldn’t have made it through this without you.