Raising the roof, as well as the rest of the house

If it weren’t for bad luck, Island Park resident Anna D’Amaro would have no luck at all.

Count the ways.

A week prior to Hurricane Sandy, which wiped out her ranch home, D’Amaro’s 9-year-old nephew, Philip John Califano, died of cancer.

The October, 2012 storm a week later wiped out her home and her vehicles.

The week after the storm, her husband lost his job, and remains out of work.

A short time ago, she lost her brother-in-law to a stroke and then she had a head-on car accident that wiped out her new automobile.

She says, however, that she is “moving on and looking forward to moving back into her home sometime in the next 30 days.”

Last week, D’Amaro took the first step home by raising her home to 15.8 feet above the crawl space, the second home in Island Park to be raised in compliance with new FEMA regulations.

Despite all of the incidents over the past year, she remains upbeat.

She hired a New Jersey firm called Ducky Johnson Lifts for the home raising work. Its motto is “Always above water.”

“They only charged me $20,000, much less than the local guys,” she said. “They did a great job and with the electricity and heat going in, and the house sealed against the cold, I can move into a blank home next month.”

She helped raise her home by turning the electric crank that physically moved it upward.

She looked at the house moving slowly upward.

“Maybe my luck is changing,” she said. “It certainly cannot go down.”