TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) – Three years ago, Superstorm Sandy slammed the New Jersey shore, destroying homes, splintering boardwalks, wrecking businesses and displacing thousands of people. Three years later, several thousand still cannot get back home due to bureaucratic red tape with government aid programs, disputes with contractors and insurance companies, and just not having enough money to complete the job. A recurring theme among these people is their sense of having been forgotten three years after the storm. Here are three of their stories:
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HOME IS A TRAILER
“This is paradise,” Bob Collis said, sitting under the awning of a portable trailer stuffed to the brim with many of his family’s possessions; his clothes are all in plastic storage bins wedged underneath the trailer because they won’t fit inside.
Collis and his wife, Katherine, loved the little ranch house they had in Toms River, in a tight-knit waterfront community near Barnegat Bay called Snug Harbor. But Sandy wrecked the home they lived in for 45 years. Now the 72-year-old couple lives in a trailer at a mobile home park in Berkeley Township, a few miles south, where Katherine is recovering from a series of strokes, one of which predated the storm and two more that came soon after it.