Public Employee Press

Surviving Sandy
Close encounters of the dangerous kind
Sandy hits Coney Island Hospital workers

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS


"The water's coming, get out NOW!" Michelle Johnson recalls shouting as Sandy barreled down on Sheepshead Bay. Johnson and other Local 420 members told of their harrowing escapes from rising floodwaters, their devastated lives after Hurricane Sandy took their homes - and their dedication to resuming their work caring for the injured and ill at Coney Island Hospital.

Clad in pajamas and flip-flops at 2 a.m., Johnson grabbed her wallet and cell phone and with her daughter and grandchild made her way to safety at an upstairs neighbor's as water gushed into her basement apartment.

An 18-year veteran Institutional Aide at Coney Island Hospital, Johnson now lives with her mother - four generations in a two-bedroom Brownsville apartment. Her adult daughter and grandchild were recently turned away from a city shelter.

"We sleep on the floor. I have nothing to wear, just the clothes on my back," she said. "Sandy destroyed our lives, it's unbelievable, but thank God I am still here." She lives off credit cards as she awaits aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DC 37 leaders estimate that some 12,000 members were seriously affected by the superstorm, with about 200 union families left homeless - doubled up with friends or relatives or in city shelters.

Patient Care Associate Gloria Harris lost her two-family house in Far Rockaway when Jamaica Bay met the Atlantic Ocean Oct. 29. "It was darkness and chaos and the waters shook the house," she said. "There are no words to describe how frightening it was."

After five hours, the waters receded, but the house was a wreck and the rental apartment that helped pay the mortgage was gone.

After the storm, members of her church helped rewire the house as volunteers cleared out debris and stripped the building to the frame. Displaced, Harris stays in Richmond Hill, Queens. A kind coworker gave her money for work uniforms.

Certified Nurse's Aide Maxine Mason, a 24-year Health and Hospitals Corp. employee, remembers Oct. 29, when she finished the second tour at the hospital and returned to her house a mile away. Sandy's driving winds pushed the Atlantic toward Coney Island Creek and quickly flooded the seaside community.

"Water came from everywhere," Mason said. Her car stalled, so she and her husband forged through waist-deep water for blocks to reach safety on higher ground. Eventually they found shelter in a concrete sixth-floor hallway of a nearby public housing project whose elevator shafts were flooded.

"We were wet and cold," Mason said. "Someone offered us two beach chairs, and that's where we slept. We had a flashlight and candles. It was traumatic, but we are alive."

Sandy's calling card, a watermark four feet high, rings Mason's ground floor. They stay in a third-floor bedroom. They repeatedly call FEMA, insurance agents and engineers to assess the damage. "You have to choose words carefully, or your claims can be denied," she said.

"I hope that we can come back and rebuild," Mason said. They need contractors to tear out ruined wallboard and insulation and replace the electrical and plumbing systems. "I'm afraid of getting sick from mold, but at least I still have a bed to sleep in."