Red tape ties up recovery of Breezy Point’s burned homes

A Sandy-devastated area in Queens remains in tatters nine months after the storm, with only one property in a 100-home fire zone being rebuilt, Crain’s reported.

About 350 of the nearly 3,000 homes in Breezy Point were irreparably wrecked from flood or fire during the storm. But while rebuilding work has begun on many of the flooded homes, residents of the fire zone remain in limbo.

The rebuilding process has been mired in red tape. Though some homeowners in the zone have filed rebuilding plans, they have yet to be approved by the city or by the Breezy Point Cooperative, which oversees the neighborhood. Other homeowners are going back and forth with insurance companies, while many waited for the new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps before beginning work.

“That fire zone is the one scar out of all of this that won’t go away,” Kieran Burke, a firefighter whose home was destroyed in the blaze, told the AP. “These aren’t just beach homes. These are people’s lives.” [AP via Crain’s]  – Hiten Samtani