Three years after Sandy, Brigantine street rebuilt, still restive

Oct. 29--One in an occasional series.

BRIGANTINE, N.J. -- Bob Huff was on the fast track, Sandy rebuilding-wise. How quaint that all seems now, when he was told he was in the "tiger" group, pushed to the head of the line in the months just after the storm.

But three murky and frustrating years followed, stops and starts, grants that added up to almost nothing, then endless volunteers, do-gooders who couldn't nail boards straight, an 88-year-old sent to his ruined home, resumé-building kids who think they can paint, more than a year living in a gutted house, his family in and out, help from the church, then changes in state procedures that helped others but not his own family.

"It's maddening," he said Tuesday from inside his house on hard-hit Cummings Place in Brigantine.

But even so. He is home now, as are most of his neighbors on a once-carefree street of Jersey Shore locals, a dozen of their homes newly elevated, in the town where Sandy made landfall on Oct. 29, 2012.

Home, even as all around him, latecomers seem to just file a few papers and get $150,000 elevation grants just like that, Huff, 60, can only shake his head at how decisions, bad timing, bad advice, bureaucracy, and shoddy work came up short. He got a $78,000 insurance payout, ran through his savings. He was the guinea pig.

Huff is still fighting cancer, still unemployed after years of working for the Casino Control Commission, but at least now living in a house that, more or less, has been rebuilt. Others on the deluged street fared better, but also worse, in terms of morale.

It's not perfect. The punch list left to him is long -- the house leaks, the shower is not finished, much work had to be redone. But in the last year, with a little help, Huff has made a sort of peace with all that. He has a little of his old good humor back, some of the old jokes. He is trying to push away lingering bitterness. How can you live with that?

Even the rebuilt Brigantine Elks Club will be back to holding Comedy Nights in November.

"We're better off than many," Huff said. "We have food, we have a house, even though it's a little dinged up."

Many on the block are fighting health problems. "Everybody's beat up," said Albert Fox, whose mother, Barbara, 80, is back in an elevated and rebuilt house.

Across the street, the Haesers have returned to a newly elevated home, after "get these people back already" intervention from Brigantine Mayor Phil Guenther and the Rev. John Scotland lit a fire under the contractor in the final weeks.

Two weeks ago, they sat eating their first dinner from the living room that now sits high above the street. Laurel Haeser had not figured out the lift installed outside, so Bill, 69, was navigating the stairs with his oxygen tank.

"It's a continuing calamity," Bill Haeser said. "But if you have to go through a calamity in a town like Brigantine, these people really care about each other."

In the three years since they were happily ensconced in pre-Sandy Brigantine, they have been out of their home twice, once for it to be rebuilt, then again for eight months while it was being elevated.

In some ways, that second displacement -- they spent time in a home they own in the Poconos -- was the tougher.

Ten days after returning home, Bill was taken on Tuesday to intensive care.

"I think the stress of this Sandy debacle is being borne by Bill," Laurel wrote in a Facebook message. "I am so stressed . . . when will life return to normal!!??"

Bill's deteriorating health prevented him from helping Laurel with the aggravation and cast a pall on their lives. "Twenty years ago, I'd be in there with both hands," he said. "I'm out of bullets."

Others are more settled. Statewide, about 2,000 of 7,600 receiving rebuilding grants have finished.

The Hewitts, Shelly and Brian, rebuilt quickly after the storm but changing FEMA maps and local rules stymied their plans for elevating. The work stalled for more than a year, but in the last year they have torn down their house and replaced it with a three-story modular home, elevated above the Links public golf course behind Cummings Place.

Like Laurel Haeser, Lois McGarrigel had to do the paperwork and bureaucratic fighting. Her husband, Harry, a former Atlantic City Beach Patrol assistant chief, is 87.

But the McGarrigels weathered the storm better, emotionally. They are back in an expanded home, up high enough -- the $150,000 supplemented with their own money -- to allow a garage on the first floor. The new wheelchair lift (not that Harry needs a wheelchair) starts inside the garage and leads into the new den, where Harry will happily root for Notre Dame from brand-new furniture on Saturday.

They've hung a Fighting Irish banner on their new deck. Their welcome mat, a gift from a friend, reads, "You're home now. Take a deep breath." And how.

"It feels great," Lois McGarrigel said. "It's wonderful. You say, it's all worth it. Just to be so high and look down. I'm thankful it's finished."

Harry said, "I'm learning to live in the altitude." But he will not evacuate should another storm come their way. They have a gas stove. "We're up high enough," he said. "If it's that important, the whole island goes."

Zach Bauman rents from next door, but he will move out in March to allow the owner to raise the house. "They've been through hard times," he said of the block.

As for Huff, he is still seeking money that he says should have come to him -- a state grant award of $31,700 that he was told would -- except for $1,700 -- duplicate other benefits, so it would not be allowed, and so he turned it down. Now, those rules that so vexed Sandy victims -- Huff made 14 trips to the state grant office in Egg Harbor Township -- have loosened. But it is unclear if he can go back and get that grant now.

Huff also remains upset about the work done by the Fuller Center of Tabernacle, a nonprofit rebuilding group that worked for a time, but not currently, in Atlantic City, and, Huff says, did inconsistent, subpar work with its bands of volunteers. Materials he paid for ended up on other projects, he said.

Messages and emails seeking comment left for the Fuller Center and its directors, Merle and Neil Brown, both in Tabernacle and at national headquarters, were not returned this week.

Huff says he'd never go that route again. He wanted to tear down and get a modular, like the Hewitts, but early guidelines didn't allow it. Or, rebuild quickly with a grant and elevate later. The state acknowledges the process got easier as time went on.

"What's bothering us now is, because we were early, we got nothing," he said. "Now everybody's getting everything. I'm glad for everybody who got the $150,000."

With daughter Haley away at college in West Virginia, Huff said, he is planning to finish fixing up the house and sell. He and his wife are thinking of the mountains; he and the Shore will part ways. "After this flood, my love of the ocean is over," he said.

arosenberg@phillynews.com

609-823-0453 @amysrosenberg

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