Sandy victims take to the airwaves

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Eight displaced Island Park residents appeared on the “Halftime Howie Show” on WGBB Radio on Sunday to express their mounting frustration with NY Rising as they try to rebuild their homes almost two full years after Superstorm Sandy.

NY Rising, which is tasked with distributing billions of dollars in federal Sandy aid money allocated to the state by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has so far has disbursed only a portion of the funds it has promised, said Ann D’Amaro, who reached out to WGBB’s Howie Appel.

“It’s very important that everybody understands that New York Rising has been giving everybody the runaround for the past two years,” D’Amaro said. “They’re making it very difficult for the homeowners to stay here.”

The show was transmitted live on Sunday night from the Sunset Avenue home of Carmen and Magdalena Skrine and their two small children. The Skrines bought the house nine months before Sandy struck in October 2012. The house was severely damages by the storm and has been unoccupied since, as the Skrines have lived like “transients,” Carmen Skrine said.

“We moved to Port Washington for a year and now we’re back down in Long Beach as we try to keep an eye on the house,” he said.

Carmen Skrine said his wife tries to contact NY Rising every day, but phone calls and emails go unreturned. He said the family has been assigned three caseworkers in the past two years.

“We’re stuck in a Catch-22,” he said.

The Skrines were among the 200 or so Long Islanders to participate in the “Walk a Mile in Our Shoes” demonstrations last March, during which protesters toted signs that read, “We had flood insurance. Why are we homeless?” and T-shirts that identified wearers as “Homeless with a mortgage.” Magdalena Skrine, who carried a sign that day reading, “We have nothing left but our shoes,” was pregnant at the time. Michal Skrine was born in July, and has never lived in the family home. Neither has the family’s daughter, Thaana, who was born two months after Sandy.

“It’s not fair that I have to pay rent and a mortgage,” Magdalena said.

The group was gathered together by D’Amaro, a Barnum Isle resident who is living out of a trailer while her home is still undergoing reconstruction.

According to the NY Rising website, more than $282 million dollars has already been distributed to 6,338 homeowners for damages that resulted from Sandy, Irene and Lee, including $201 million to Nassau County residents.

The State, through its buyout and acquisition program, has also made offers totaling $293 million to purchase 709 destroyed homes. Both D’Amaro and the Skines said that they were offered an opportunity to sell their homes, but declined.

“We just want to get back into our home,” Magdalena said.