Finding Higher Ground

Caked in the silt from the receding sea that had smeared across Far Rockaway, Eyvette Martin dragged a salvaged shopping cart 40 blocks across the peninsula, looking for bottled water, flashlights and help. The night before, the water had rushed into her bungalow on Beach 88th Street. She climbed on top of a dresser as it floated across her bedroom, and then into a small loft space, where she spent the night with her friend at the time, her pit bull and a packet of vital documents, like her birth certificate. It was all she could save.

“Water rushing in traumatized me,” she said. “I was hysterical at first.”

That was just the beginning. Federal aid came quickly (about $7,000 that she used to replace her belongings), but a new home did not. She lived for six months in her ruined bungalow with sodden drywall and no power.

At night, she kept warm under a pile of blankets collected from different aid groups. She took baths with buckets of water collected from friends’ houses. “This is how you find out who your true friends are,” she said.

Today, she lives in Arverne View, a cluster of seaside towers once called Ocean Village, where residents also lived in pitch-blackness and freezing conditions after the storm, some for weeks. Refurbished by new owners, the apartment she chose was on the highest floor she could get — 11.

Ms. Martin still lives by the sea, but would prefer drier ground. “I used to always say that I wanted to live on the water,” she said. “I had dreams and stuff. After that I said, ‘oh no, no, no.’”



— SARAH MASLIN NIR