How is that help after Hurricane Sandy going for you all?

After Hurricane Sandy hit Long Beach, we sustained substantial structural damage to our house and our business was obliterated in this once beautiful beach community.  Our town officials were nowhere to be found in the aftermath (they must have been hiding in their overtime holes)

The federal government’s “so called” flood insurance plan is a joke!  There seems to be so much red tape to get anything of worth out of it!  After years of paying high premiums, they shouldn’t be nickel and diming repairs (although the premiums do include replacement of a dumbwaiter).  I’ll be sure to get one of those next time as maybe the process would go faster! 

We as many are good, honest citizens who pay our taxes & bills, yet we were turned down for both personal and business SBA loans.  Not to mention the fact that the paperwork is ridiculous and you have to be both an accountant and a lawyer at the same time to be able to fill out the forms.  When we went to the Ice Arena to get help from the SBA, they had neither computers nor printers (ridiculous in this day and age) and we were told that we should fill it out on line.  Marvelous idea when the whole town didn’t have any power!

There seems to be plenty of paperwork out there from FEMA about the marvelous loans/grants and everything that can be had – but no one seems to qualify for any of it.

Forget about building seawalls in the ocean, the officials need to look to Amsterdam and see how it’s done for their waterways to block the water from the bay!  Aren’t there any “smart” people in these positions to see that we need to be able to block the bay from overflowing????

On a last note, I would like to thank the ordinary people who volunteered their time to make hot meals for us all (Knights of Columbus) and the people that drove up and down the streets with supplies as well as those who walked block after block to offer supplies to us in bright colored wagons.  We thank you for helping us out when our city officials and government didn’t.

I hope when we rebuild this town, it will be made up of ordinary people who are truly extraordinary.

Yet again I am “sick of it all!”.