‘%^&$ FEMA,’ Fed Up Staten Island Residents Organize Own Relief Efforts, Want Election Recount
To donate funds to Staten Island Residents go to https://www.fundraise.com/sandyrelief
. To donate building supplies send to Gateway Rotary Foundation-Brown Cross. 463 Mill RD 10306 e-mail Browncross@gmail.com. Or send checks to the Gateway Rotary Foundation-Brown Corss to PO BOX 50168 Staten Island NY 10305.
Residents of Staten Island, New York are cold, homeless, and fed up with the lack of federal help more than a week after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the area and less than 24 hours after being hit with a more powerful than expected nor'easter.
“We’ve seen one FEMA car in a week,” Gennaro said. “I am embarrassed of my country, my government, the media… The 150% of the supplies we are providing are from our neighbors.”
What the **** was the day after plan? Obama got re-elected based on his response. What *&%$*&@ Sandy Relief? The same response we saw in Libya, my family members, my countrymen are dying.
- Vincenzo Gennaro, Staten Island Resident
Gennaro, vice president for a private charter jet company based in New York City, says both FEMA and the Red Cross have been non-existent and he has been helping to coordinate rebuilding efforts with neighbors on the island instead.
“They knew water was coming a mile in and told people to leave - OK,” Gennaro said of FEMA. “What the **** was the day after plan? Obama got re-elected based on his response. What *&%$*&@ Sandy Relief? The same response we saw in Libya, my family members, my countrymen are dying.”
In fact, the garbage men have been more helpful, he said.
“They deserve purple hearts,” he says.
A lifelong Staten Island resident, Gennaro, is recruiting volunteers for the local Brown Cross and the Gateway Rotorary Foundation to organize supply posts and dispatches along the island. So far, they have an estimated 2,000 volunteers, many contractors, who are taking matters into their own hands by fixing homes, draining basements, and clearing debris.
Gennaro says they are in need of building supplies – not food - and private donations that can go directly to families. He guarantees 90% will go directly to buying warehouse and building materials. Things like electrical panels, circuit breakers, sheet rock, roofing, boilers, etc.
“We are not leaving our properties for other people to rebuild. There is nowhere for these people to go,” he said of countless families with devastated homes who he’s seen on his drives throughout the island. “You have to rebuild quickly. We got to get back up.”
FEMA closed disaster relief centers Wednesday because of the nor'easter angering already frustrated residents. The agency has received praise for their quick response by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. But the agency responded to anger and criticism with a statement Wednesday. "Community relations teams are on the ground in the hardest-hit areas of the mid-Atlantic going door-to-door to inform disaster survivors about available services and resources and to gather situational awareness."
Gennaro has driven around damaged neighborhoods every night since the storm – assessing, recruiting, and helping. But his efforts hit an emotional head on Wednesday night, during the heart of the nor'easter when he was called to help a family find a man and a young boy lost in the snow. They were found, but he ended up picking up a 24-year-old young man named Angelo Decinoterzo, who was caught walking four miles in Wednesday’s snow storm after trying to catch a bus.
The man had lost his home in the storm, and was attempting to get to his family’s home in Brooklyn.
Decinoterzo says he was even denied a ride by police officers who said they couldn’t give him a ride to the bus stop just four blocks away.
Rebuilding is the most immediate need, but calls for an election recount are growing as well. Gennaro was unable to vote because he was stuck in line for gas.
“The East Coast communities are speaking via Facebook, Twitter, and are demanding a recount, it’s impossible for us to be voting under these conditions -- no Internet, no petrol, no fuel, no money, not even telephones,” he said. “We demand a recount.”
Gennaro says he doesn’t care for Romney or Obama. He says it's simply a civil rights issue.
“How can you even think about voting? They paid no mind to us. They (candidates) didn’t even mention us the whole night.”
The boisterous leader, whose father and family have owned pizza shops and businesses on the island for years, is also sick and tired of being called a victim.
“I’m not a victim,” he said. “We are supporting families and friends.”
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Replies
in the meantime, they continue to wait for FEMA in new orleans. and nothing has been accomplished. what did people do b4 FEMA? they used elbow grease.
Government is not the answer. It's the problem. Period.
WE are the answer. Free individuals, self reliant, innovative, tough and resililent. How in God's name do you think the Pilgrims made it? Covered wagon all the way across the midrift of this country with only a shot gun and a brain with common sense to keep your family safe? I think most of them didn't have large screen LCD Tvs, but they had each other. Wind, rain, indians, fires, snow, bears, wolves, cold, heat, exposure - they had it all, and yet somehow they established this country (there was NO federal goverment assistance, no social security, no medicare, no FEMA, no insurance, barely any law).
What makes us think we'll make it if we don't have 1/10 of the tenacity that these early pilgrims had? We better ponder this throughout our Thanksgiving holiday. We have ALOT that they didn't have, and we are capsizing over a bad winter storm, and freezing temps. I think we better get a firm hold on our new reality and shape it into something we can all live with. We are on our own. THERE IS NO HELP coming. There is no calvary, save the one WE create. Get used to it.
That is our new reality. Better figure it out before ALOT more people DIE.
Deb.; No White news other than later this week OB travels to Myanmar, that had 2 earthquakes and a country full of {{peaceful}} muslims<>Satire..Sorry..!!
Maybe four year won't be enough to convince your average 'taker' style American ... that socialism is not going to work... maybe 8 years will not be enough. How long WILL be enough? 18 Years? 80 Years? 800 Years?
I guess we may never know. We might all die in abject poverty still clinging to our God and guns. (or cold bars of a prison?)
Who knows. It's driving me mad not knowing the answers to these simple questions.
On Sept. 7th, 2011 my area in N PA and the Southern Tier of NY State got hit by Hurricane Lee.
It was devestating. My dealing with FEMA was they called me many times, sent out two people to
look at my home, one who was very late. I was told FEMA only covered structural damage. Between
FEMA and my flood insurance little was covered. I had to have two companies come in and clean my home
because of all the dirt and silt. In the end I had to pay quite a bit of money to get the lower part of my home
back to just being a plain room, it had been a rec room. I had four and one half feet of water.
My advice to anyone who goes thru this, is get help from your children. Three of my four adult children
came here and helped me. Two came from VA. So it was hard on all of us. Get to know your neighbors,
if you don't know them already. My neighbors and total strangers helped me and so many others.
As for state or fed help, it is useless. I was also told through the joke of dealing with FEMA that since
I live on $31,000.00 a year I made too much money for them to help me. So it is not worth even dealing
with these people.
Just working with your flood insurance people is hard enough and they really are just front's for FEMA.
You never get over a major flood. Never. You lose so many precious things. I was 74 when this happened
to me and as the widow of a retired Marine what kept me going, beside a strong faith in God, is just picking
myself up and getting back in the race, every Marine is taught to do that, as are their wives.
If you have money to send to help the people in NY and NJ great. Keep them in your prayers. It will
take most of them one year to even get over the shock and more than that if they lost their homes.
Thanks for "listening." One thing my young Marine Corps husband told me from the first days of our
50 year marriage was "nobody promised you a rose garden." Jo D. Little Meadows, PA 18
In the 2007 flood in OH our county was really hard hit. There were many housing projects built in flood plains, and hundreds of homes totally destroyed. In our local county, the emergency management person was a local farmer. The morning of the flood my daughter was living in one of the developments with her 4 children, the Complex handimen woke her with "grab some clothes and your kids, the river's rising and you have 15 minutes to get out." She woke 3 of 4 kids and they were back saying get out now, she sent 2nd oldest to wake the oldest and they ran, as they went up the hill, the flood waters took their home. She was in shock, and I worked at the local JFS, I took her to work with me because they'd know what was going on, for about an hour they sent her here & there to sign up for things, then the EM set up a single site in the Jobs Plus area of the building, and by afternoon we were signing up businesses who could help and local volunteer groups, (The daughter ended up working with the program, and for 3 1/2 more months at jobs plus because she jumped in to answer the phones at their site and help.) By the time FEMA came in the county and state had everyone homes and local charities had provided food, clothing and even some furniture. FEMA did some loans, but most of what was done was with local and state, and our prepared farmer Emergency Manager, was elected to handle these things at the state level. They now have all kinds of contingincy plans for such things.
This is how self-reliant patriots work.