Forgotten Peninsula
How a NYC neighborhood filled with the cities first responders is the last on the list
On a busy corner of Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 97th street, local residents walk to and from the bus stop past a Victorian style house with a wraparound porch, huge by New York City Standards. They don’t seem to notice the gang of cats guarding the porch, the grubby once white-washed clapboard, or the posted signs “condemned,” and “rodent infestation.”
The house is one of many houses in The Rockaways, a group of working class, beachfront neighborhoods traditionally popular with police and firemen, straddling the Queens/Brooklyn Border, which were devastated by hurricane Sandy.
Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 97th is in what is arguably the Rockaways most visited area; it is one block away from the newly reconstructed section of the decimated boardwalk, and one block in the other direction from Rockaway Taco, now Summer Share the well known purveyor of surf-shack cuisine.
$480 million was allocated from FEMA to rebuild the Rockaway boardwalk, which as NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver said is “a place to enjoy the waterfront and beat the summer heat, but more importantly it is the first line of defense for the Rockaway community against coastal storms.”
The boardwalk re-opened in summer of 2014. In 2015 another three reconstructed miles of the once 4.7 mile boardwalk opened, a full three years after the hurricane. It is currently 2.6 miles long. The city plans to have the full boardwalk reconstructed by the end of spring 2017, five years after the storm hit.
“Our boardwalk still hasn’t been rebuilt. Coney and Jersey had theirs that summer,” says life-long Far Rockaway resident Evelin Gaspar, referring to the quickly rebuilt boardwalks in the nearby beach communities that were also hard hit by the storm.
Coney Islands boardwalk was not as damaged as the Rockaway’s , but FEMA quickly stepped in and gave over $1million to repair “ornamental light poles,” along the boardwalk, and gave $79million to Jersey Shore communities, most of which were close to completion the summer after the storm, according to a FEMA press release. Construction on rebuilding the Rockaway boardwalk was started in April of 2014.
The popular Riis Park, and the National Gateway Recreation Area are also symbols of the Rockaways, public beachfront parks that are still not rebuilt. Assemblyman of the area,Phil Goldfeder, this month has called on state legislatures to send aid to rebuild. “Sadly, the devastation from Sandy has tarnished these once-proud sites. We must provide the resources to restore these true gems,” says Goldfeder. The two part plan to rebuild is still waiting on funding approval for the around $8million project, only $2 million have so far been approved.
Even so, the boardwalk and the recreation sites are heavily trafficked by visitors from outside of the Rockaways. There are many abandoned houses and business spaces, houses in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure owned by people in the Rockaways because the owners could not afford to rebuild, and have still not received adequate insurance or FEMA payouts to cover these costs.
“A lot of business still haven’t be re-opened, and a lot of people left and never came back.” Says Gaspar. Walking the streets in the most popular areas of the Rockaway’s, there are many still abandoned stores and houses.
Kirsten Gillibrand, Congresswoman for the area, is sponsoring a bill to continue FEMA payouts to the regions hardest hit by Sandy, among them the Rockways. “Outrageous that 3 years after Sandy, $17k flood insurance claims are still outstanding,” she tweets.
In addition to flood damages that have not been rectified, there is also major fire damage that keeps part of the 148 homes destroyed by fire during the storm and its aftermath, damaged and still in massive need of repair. “Some streets [in the Rockaways] burned down because our electricity was never shut off,” says Gaspar, pointing to lawsuits claiming that LIPA and National Grid failed to shut off power to the area, even after it had been evacuated.
Nearby, popular beach destination, Fire Island also was evacuated, and its power providers, LIPA and National Grid, shut off its power quickly to minimize risk and damage to the area.
The case is still being decided, but this points to another issue in the area, firefighters. In the entirety of the peninsula that the Rockaway’s sit on, there are no New York City Fire Departments. Instead, there are four volunteer stations. These stations are staffed by unpaid volunteers who are retired, or have day jobs. Many of the volunteers are NYPD officers, or members of the NYFD, who live in the Rockaway’s but work in other boros. During the hurricane, much of the equipment they use was destroyed, and they haven’t yet replaced all of it, according to reports from ABC News and The New York Times.
Even City Island, which has just over 4,000 residents has a NYFD outpost.
This August, two Rockaway residents died in their home from smoke inhalation due to a kitchen fire. There was no report on weather a well-trained and paid on duty fire brigade with adequate equipment could have saved them.
As some of the 115,00 local residents walk past the burned-out house after getting off the bus nearby, a police car rolls by, maybe keeping the peace, maybe going home.
Lack of public transportation and transportation infrastructure has historically been a bottleneck in the Rockaways. It has only been made worse by Sandy’s aftermath, and the imminent threat of another disaster to the low-lying barrier peninsula.
During the hurricane, residents rushed to get off of the peninsula, stymied by the lack of options. There are three main roads off of Rockaway peninsula and one subway.
Only 23 miles from midtown Manhattan, the Rockways feel like a world away. The elevated A train runs down most of the Peninsula, but its hour and twenty minute travel time from the Rockaways’ to downtown Manhattan, and is unreliableness especially during non-rushour times makes it a very inconvenient choice for communing and evacuation.
The bus service, which also takes over an hour to downtown Manhattan, is popular with the residents, many of whom cannot afford a car, and the expenses, time and hassle that come along with owning one in a city.
There was also a ferry line, which cost $2.50 from Rockaway pier to Wall Street, expanded by Mayor Bloomberg to ease the transportation situation, when the A line was shut down after the storm. This year, the ferry service was suspended after Mayor Di Blasio cited high costs.
The Far Rockaway Long Island Railroad line is another alternative, but it also takes over an hour to Manhattan and is prohibitively expensive, at $16.50 round trip fare.
Coming under harsh criticism last month for his “faster alternative” arrival via private ferry, almost a half an hour late to a memorial for the victims of airlines flight 587,which crashed in the area in 2001, the Mayor unveiled a plan to put the ferry back in service. This is being seen as an apparent attempt to win back some of the area’s residents, who have been notably averse to the mayor and his many Rockaway faux-pas. The issue of high ferry costs was not broached by the Mayor.
There are another set of tracks that run along the peninsula- the Long Island Railroad Rockaway Beach route. This train line has been around since the late 1800’s, built during the Rockaways glory days as a fashionable beach resort town for New York’s wealthy and increasing numbers of middle class, according to local historians Carol and Lawrence Kaplan in their book Between Ocean and City: The Transformation of Rockaway, New York. The line was stopped in the late 1960’s but its infrastructure remains, in a rare, cleared lane of land running from Rockaway Beach all the way to western Queens.
The infrastructure of the Rockaway Beach line is in the process of being turned into a high line-style park, running from western Queens down to Rego Park. It stops before, what Mike Keane, city planner who was part of the Queensway park impact report, says is “the most beautiful part;” the beachfront of the Rockaway’s.
“What waterfront property do you know that a developer wouldn’t be running to to build.” Says Keane. “Historically the trend has been transit and land use, it’s like a chicken or the egg scenario.”
The plan not only deprives the residents of the Rockaway’s of a beautiful park, but even more importantly, badly needed transportation; on this line, a rider could get to midtown Manhattan in under 35 minutes, a third of the time that the subway takes. It would also be an alternative to the hour and twenty minute long express bus rides into the city’s business centers.
Other alternatives to the LIRR or Queensway Park is to put an express bus that runs along the already present cleared lane where the defunct tracks lay, says Keane.
Keane cites costs as the probable reason for the Rockaways being left out of the park building. He also cites this as the reason why a park was more popular than reinstating the LIRR line, “you can phase in a park, put gravel and dirt, and then benches.” Revamping the rail line would be a bigger cost and would have to be done all at once. “You can’t do a railway piecemeal,” he says.
Additionally, it would bring more tourists into the area, bringing in much needed spending, and making the area more in the spotlight for government spending.
The beachfront community of the Rockaways has historically been an area with high numbers of its residents working as police and firefighters, according to the Kaplans. “My next-door neighbor is a fireman, we have another one that lives down the block and a cop that lives down the block as well. Defiantly makes you feel safe,” says Gaspar. These first responders are are relied on to help every other part of the city, but who can they and other residents of the Rockaways rely on to help them?
