Gavin Stern – Fighting Mold After Sandy from Gavin Stern on Vimeo.

Hammers pound on water-stained drywall. Mold-encased flooring is pried up. A toxic haze hangs over bedrooms now separated only by raw wooden beams. The dirty air swirls around young volunteers as they pant through respirator masks and tear apart what was once a home.

This is post-Sandy cleanup – volunteer crews, gutting out homes to save them from mold.

“It’s not glamorous work, but construction never is,” said Howard Singer, 46, who owns the home at 432 beach 47th St. in Far Rockaway. “Hopefully, this is going to allow the house to air out.”

Sandy’s floodwaters reached halfway up the front door.

“Everything below that has to be ripped out,” said Alexey Abramov, a medical student who organized a volunteer group consisting of students from New York Medical College and members of the Eastchester Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

Abramov’s team received their assignment and equipment from Respond and Rebuild, which coordinates a volunteer effort out of Pilgrim Church of Arverne, itself hollowed out by the storm. The pews are pushed aside to make room for shovels, boots, and boxes filled with gloves, hard hats, goggles and respirators – all donated from the Occupy Sandy movement.

“Mold levels are very high,” said Charlie Paget-Seekins, 28, from Booneville, Calif., a crew coordinator for Respond and Rebuild. “We are exposed and worse than that there are a lot of homeowners that are living in homes that have serious mold problems.”

Paget-Seekins said exposure is a sacrifice that volunteers such as him are aware of, but with proper use of personal protective equipment – such as respirators – he said health issues can be kept to a minimum.

Yet, the equipment that Abramov’s team was issued, a standard N95 respirator, is only suitable to clean up a, “small mold area, less than roughly three feet by three feet,” according to an instruction pamphlet by 3M that is included with its respirator masks.

With the levels of mold seen in Sandy-struck homes – the floors are caked with it – a paper mask may not be enough, said Evonne Kaplan-Liss, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University.

“Volunteers are using N95 respirators, the most basic. They should be used only when there’s minimal mold,” Kaplan-Liss said.

While exposure to large amount of mold should not be life-threatening, Kaplan-Liss said, it is possible to pick up a mold lung infection, which would require treatment by a specialist.

Matt Engel, a coordinator for Respond and Rebuild, said volunteers are issued the best equipment available based on donations, and that the paper masks are sufficient for the short-term crews.

“For demolition crews, with people going out once or twice, we’re told the N95 is safe. People on a long-term basis, they’re using a more advanced P100 half-face respirator with Tyvek suits,” said Engel, 30, from Westfield, Mass. “As we get more of those in, we’re going to transition to those.”

Engel said Respond and Rebuild would benefit from donations of the protective equipment. The more-extensive P100 respirators cost about $35 each, while that same amount can buy boxes upon boxes of N95 masks.

Paget-Seekins said he sometimes feels congested after working in Far Rockaway. Engel, a smoker, said he experiences some “chest stuff.”

“Volunteers who are sensitive to molds may experience itchy eyes, skin irritation and sneezing,” Kaplan-Liss said, with people who smoke, have asthma or other lung conditions being especially susceptible.

Though the volunteer effort is not without sacrifice, the work is worth thousands of dollars to the victims. Many of those affected were uninsured or underinsured for floods. Singer’s insurance, which he paid into for years, wouldn’t cover damage from rising water.

“They’ve been waiting their whole lives to say there’s no insurance,” Singer said.

Though gutting homes of flooring and drywall is an extensive, painful process, it is necessary to save the home.

“If people just rebuild without removing the mold first, it’s going to become a public health epidemic,” Paget-Seekins said. “Homes are going to become structurally unsound.”

Back at Pilgrim Church of Arverne, a new group of volunteers arrive, load up on gear and head out for the day, despite the health risk.

“We’ve seen the poor response from government agencies and it seemed like the only people who were actually here and knew what was happening was Occupy Sandy,” said Dioclis Hernandez, 37, from Brooklyn. “They went door to door to find out what people actually needed instead of just dropping off crap and walking away.”

Pastor Dennis Loncke, who has been working with Respond and Rebuild out of the Sandy-devastated Pilgrim Church of Arverne building, has not lost his optimism.

“What Sandy has done is brought us a place not to focus so much on the past, but to focus on going forward – what do we do from here,” Loncke said. “In the midst of all that is going on, we’re looking for the good that God is doing.  It is a challenging time.”

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle from Alexa Gorman on Vimeo.

Green activists are springing up on college campuses across Long Island. The sustainability movement is taking new forms at Adelphi University, Long Island University Post and Stony Brook University. Each campus is working with students and faculty to promote sustainable living in a variety of ways.

Adelphi University

Sarah Cinquemani, a sophomore at Adelphi University, is focused on the future—not her own, but the future of the environment. She is the President of the Green Council, bringing residents together to create a more sustainable campus.

“Being a resident and going to the dining halls, I see a lot of waste,” she said. “I don’t like it. I don’t want to see it.”

Cinquemani works with her Residence Hall Director and the Assistant to the Dean of Student Affairs on the university’s sustainability plans in a continuing collaboration between students and faculty to create programs and initiatives to educate their campus community.

Green Council works with the seven residence halls on Adelphi’s campus to promote “green living,” according to Cinquemani. Their main location is in the Chapman Hall, home of the eco-friendly living-learning center.

The community houses students who are committed to living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle—which means adjusting their use of lighting and power, and recycling all appropriate items. It was established in 2009 and encompasses the first and second floors of the building.

“This year we’re really focusing on getting the name out there,” Cinquemani said. One of her goals is to expand the council and get the message of green living out through campus-wide programming. Previously, the campus has hosted an “Adelphi Unplugged” program in which the power to Chapman was cut to conserve energy.

Educational and interactive programs are the primary method the Green Council uses to spreads its message. Recently, the council hosted a green cooking program in which students learned to cook with little to no electricity. Along with its new advisor, Residence Hall Director Camille Pajor, the Green Council is developing goals and core values—some of which include working with other environmental groups on campus.

Pajor said that waste is being reduced already through the water filtration systems that were installed in a few places on campus last year. Each station looks like a water fountain, but it is used to refill bottles.

According to Kathleen Watchorn, Assistant to the Dean of Student Affairs, over 150,000 water bottles have been saved since the filtration systems were installed.

Cinquemani said that small changes like biodegradable containers in the dining halls would make a huge impact as well.

“It would be great to see people who are more aware of the water that they use and the electricity that they use,” she said. “I don’t think people realize that.”

Long Island University Post

At Long Island University Post, the Environmental Sustainability Graduate Program is in its early stages. Billy Achnitz, Graduate Assistant for the Sustainability Studies Program, has been working with the program for four years.

The program falls under the Facilities Department on campus, marking a key distinction from the independent initiatives in other universities.

LIU Post’s sustainability efforts are growing in part from inspiration from other campuses. One of Achnitz’s projects is researching the programs of rival universities.

“This year has been kind of a testing period,” he said. His focus this semester is the campus’s waste stream. Currently, the university is looking into recycling options for tires, mattresses, scrap metal and e-waste.

Achnitz applied for the Coca-Cola “Keep America Beautiful” Grant last year in order to increase the school’s recycling efforts, from which LIU Post received over 30 Dasani bottle collection bins at the end of last semester.

“They stand out more,” he said. “It kind of hits people and reminds them [when] they see this giant water bottle…to recycle.”

The school installed 10-kilowatt solar panels about three years ago as well. The power generated from the panels has created over 20,065.4 kilowatt-hours of solar power as of Nov. 27, saving 16,694 pounds of carbon dioxide and 1,180.3 gallons of oil. LIU Post has saved $4,213.74 since the installation of the solar panels.

Students on the Sustainability Committee developed a vision report at the end of last year with recommendations for a more sustainable LIU Post. The group is also developing a “green office certification program,” in order to teach and reward faculty and staff members who keep a sustainable workspace.

The profits from recyclables go to a scholarship fund for a student who demonstrates passion for sustainability. It began at $250 and will break the $1,000 mark this year.

“It’s a good measure to show people that we are increasing recycling,” said Achnitz. “Being that [deposits] are five cents, that’s a lot of bottles.”

Stony Brook University

The Sustainability Services at Stony Brook University is developing an EcoLeaders program, which will incorporate peer-to-peer education and cooperation with the administration, faculty and staff on campus.

The group itself will have about 30 members, with representatives from the Undergraduate Student Government, Graduate Student Organization the Residence Hall Association and sustainability students, according to Richard Shelton, one of the founding members of the EcoLeaders.

Shelton works in the Sustainability Office, and said that there is one major flaw in the university’s program.

“A lot of the trouble that I’ve been finding…is quantifying the effects of what we’re doing on campus because all of these things are going towards a certain goal,” he said. “And we can’t say how the projects we’re doing are really bringing us closer to that goal, then the value is kind of lost even if they are good projects.”

As a whole, Stony Brook hosts over 200 sustainability initiatives each year including awareness programs, recycling projects, student projects and national contests, according to James O’Connor, Director of Sustainability Services.

O’Connor’s office oversees all green efforts on campus, from pick up schedules to campus-wide programs. Two of the largest annual programs are Earthstock and Recyclemania.

Recyclemania kicks off during the first week of February and for eight weeks. The program tracks quantities in tons of recyclables. This year, O’Connor wants to post weekly updates for the campus and community.

“Recyclemania has always been a challenge because it’s right when the students return for the spring semester,” he said. “Usually the second week of class is Recyclemania, so we have to get the message out earlier.”

Earthstock is an original program at Stony Brook, in which the week leading up to Earth Day is filled with educational programs and competitions.

“There is certainly an opportunity for students as well as the community members to get involved,” said O’Connor. “And we definitely want to increase the message that we have. To say hey, you do have the ability to make a difference.”

—

In years past, recycling was a fad that a small part of the population participated in. Now, not only is it seen as a necessity, but students actually look into the “Quality of Life” of campuses when choosing a college, according to the Princeton Review. Sustainability is no longer vague jargon used by companies, but a living, breathing part of everyday life.

LONG BEACH, N.Y. – When Sandy hit the East Coast on Oct. 29, Long Beach homeowner Chris Maksymowicz had his basement flooded, but he was not worried about the thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the furnace, heaters and walls.

Maksymowicz said the worst losses were his family photos, some of which dated back to the 1920s, an electrical train set from 1942, his wife’s dissertation work, several documents and other mementos.

“It was all in mud and sand,” he said. “I found some stuff from when I was a kid … my essays, my writings, my awards, my certificates. It’s all gone.”

Maksymowicz, who owns a house right across from the ocean on Broadway in Long Beach, was not alone in his loss. While the hurricane coverage focused on the number of damaged cars, flooded basements and contaminated house appliances, many residents feel like they lost some of their memories along with sentimental objects like photo albums and collectibles.

The hurricane, also known as a superstorm, caused about $200 million in structural losses in Long Beach, according to preliminary estimates.

Mike Skivington, who rents a house on Broadway, said Sandy caused him about $75,000 in damage to personal property, including two totaled two vehicles. But when the Navy veteran was cleaning up his basement two weeks after the hurricane, his biggest surprise was to find out that the boxes where he kept his books, notebooks, and other memories had “floated and opened and spewed everywhere. “

“They were scattered everywhere,” he said. “Lots of memories, navy memorabilia, my college graduation pictures. I got a toolbox in there with about 10 grand in tools that I haven’t even opened ‘cause I don’t want to start crying.”

Tara Rider, a history professor at Stony Brook University, said that not being able to replace mementos like those make it much harder for people to recover from a natural disaster.

“For many people it’s about those smaller items: the picture albums, the ring that they can’t find … because you can rebuild a house, you can buy a new car, but you can’t necessarily recreate that memory, that image that was captured,” Rider said.

Amy Pecker, another Long Beach homeowner who lives on Michigan St., had moved all of her albums and collectibles over four feet above the floor in her basement, but the water reached about 7-foot high and she lost most of it.

Pecker said the water, which included sand and sewage water, washed away her parents’ memories, a lifetime of pictures, baseball cards and her children’s classwork.

“Stuff like that, that you can never replace, just drowned,” she said.

For Maksymowicz, one of the hardest things is feeling guilty for not taking better care of his mementos.

“It’s those things that you don’t know what they are until they’re gone,” he said. “In terms of monetary value – family albums and pictures of 100 years ago – that didn’t cost me any money. But a part of you is gone.”

Rider said that rebuilding the physical things, however, is the first step toward full recovery.

“Rebuilding the physical house [and] buying the car remind you that this is more than a house. It is a home,” she said. “And homes are memories.”

A Beacon of Hope from Jess Stallone on Vimeo.

In a once affluent middle-class neighborhood, modest, two-story homes line the winding one-way streets of Belle Harbor that have been flooded and gutted in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.  Residents have been living within the confining and mold infested walls of their homes for more than a month without heat and are now entering the brisk month of December.

By day, residents seek refuge at the warming tent that appropriated the Father Grogan Memorial Playground at St Francis De Sales Parish–it has become a community safe haven for hundreds.

“It’s a place where other people going through the same things you’re going through, sit here and have a cup of coffee,” said Sal Amodeo, a Belle Harbor resident. “You commiserate together.”

The warming tent was setup across the street from St Francis De Sales Parish on the corner of Beach 129th Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard within a week after Sandy had hit. The tent has become a community ground for many residents, hired workers and volunteers.

“If you have any questions, what do you do? You just go down to the tent,” said Sal Amodeo, a Belle Harbor resident. “And you’ll find someone who’ll be able to answer most of your questions.”

The tent provides staff, residents, workers, officials and volunteers with a variety of different particulars—food, supplies, government services, legal services, and such. At the warming tent, there are an estimated 750 to 2,000 people being served food daily, according to Jason Maas, an organizer at the tent and New York Cares worker.

“It’s just a place for the community to come and get warm and get their services,” said Maas.

Across from the warming tent, another white tent was constructed to store supplies for a community that doesn’t even have basic necessities. Even if the residents had survived the storm with little flooding, there isn’t anywhere to purchase basic household items, such as food, toothpaste, shampoo and toilet paper

“Superstorm Sandy, it destroyed many, many homes and wiped out a lot of people’s lives, so that’s the reason we’re here—to help and restore,” said Suellen Bird, a volunteer for Faith Exchange.

When the storm hit, Amodeo was at home with his wife and 16-year-old son. Water flooded their basement and began to reach their first floor. It wasn’t until their car was submerged in water that they realized how bad the storm was.

“Like most people, it was unexpected,” said Amodeo. “We dealt with it, just like this community has been doing.”

There has been a great deal of community and government involvement in the recovery of the Rockaway Peninsula from a variety of organizations, such as New York Cares, Team Rubicon, FEMA and Faith Exchange.

Volunteers have been coming from the local Rockaway community,  all over New York and even from out-of-state.

“It makes you have a good feeling when you know that you’ve done something—a smile on a child’s face when you hand them a coloring book when they have nothing,” said Bird, of Fort Worth, Texas.

Amodeo remembers the destruction caused by 9/11 and urges people to remember Superstorm Sandy as not only a devastating event, but also for the community support and immense amount of contributions that people have given.

“I hate when people forget. Sometimes people have short-term memory,” said Amodeo. “I never forget.”

“You like stuffed mushrooms?” he asked.

He never waited for a response, handing me a mushroom in silent confidence. He knew I’d like it.

“That’s when I really started believing he was getting better.” Roseann Tarantino, 64, Frank’s wife, later told me. “His cooking got good again. We had everybody over and they tasted the food… ‘Frank, you’re back!’ they all shouted.”

Two year’s ago the Tarantinos thought Frank had three months to live. He had been diagnosed with brain cancer, the third cancer diagnosis he has received in his 67 years. He is a survivor of prostate cancer in 2006, and finished his treatment for breast cancer about two years ago, at the start of 2011. Because breast cancer commonly extends to the brain, when Frank first started exhibiting headaches, confusion, and tumor-like liaisons in the brain, many Doctors quickly diagnosed him with what seemed obvious.

Grasping a Shred of Hope from Brian Stallard on Vimeo.

Frank reached up to take his hat off, clutching it as he remembered when he was first diagnosed.

“All I was thinking was ‘I’m not gonna make my son’s wedding,’” he said. “I felt like I had a good life… but I didn’t realize time went so fast.”

According to Roseann, the whole family was shaken by the sudden diagnosis. She said by the time Frank was fully committed to Stony Brook Cancer Center she would find herself thinking of the worst.

“There were sometimes where I couldn’t picture myself being alone,” she said. “So many little things run through your mind, like I would find myself wondering who is gonna get things for me from the attic… because that’s what he does.

As Frank’s condition continued to get worse, the window for treatment began to close. Doctors from several different professional centers suggested Tarantino undergo radiation therapy, but Frank refused, saying he still had hope that what he had was not actually brain cancer.

“Everybody told [my wife], ‘say goodbye!’ everybody but me,” Tarantino said. “You have to hope that you’re gonna get better, you have to show that faith, for them.”

Dr. Shenhong Wu, Ph.D. of the Stony Brook University Medical Center and associate professor of medicine, had doubts that what Tarantino had was brain cancer.

“[Dr. Wu] took one look at his monitor and said ‘this isn’t brain cancer,’” said Roseann Tarantino. She said that Dr. Wu had explained he doubted it was brain cancer because the disease initially didn’t “present itself like cancer.”

“Radiographically – image wise it looks like cancer, but other things should be considered,” said Wu. “I saw that his [condition] was going up and down, and his cancer was not at the point to normally develop this kind of terminal illness.”

This diagnosis, contrary to the five other opinions the Tarantino’s would hear in the months following Frank’s initial hospitalization, gave him the hope he needed to refuse radiation therapy.

“If it wasn’t for my friend Dr. Wu, I really wouldn’t have made the decision not to get treated,” Frank said. “Keep the faith, that’s what it’s all about.”

Four months later, ‘keeping the faith’ in Dr. Wu’s doubts proved a prudent decision.

When Tarantino’s illness escalated and he was rushed to North Shore Hospital, Dr. Wu contacted them from his office in Stony Brook to suggest they test Frank’s spinal fluid for a fungal infection.

What North Shore professionals found was Cryptococcus, a form of fungal meningitis that had infected Tarantino’s brain. Tarantino began immediate treatment at the Stony Brook Cancer Center under the supervision of Wu’s colleague and infectious disease specialist, Dr. Roy Steigbigel, MD.

According to Dr. Steigbigel, Tarantino likely got infected with the fungal meningitis when recovering from treatment for his previous cancers.

“Fungal meningitis usually infects those with weakened immune systems for some reason such as a disease or some sort of therapy they are receiving for treatment,” said Steigbigel.

Often, cancer treatments direct all cells affect all cells of a patient’s body, both the good and the bad, severely weakening a patient’s immune system. According to Steigbigel, this makes recovering cancer patients prime candidates for infections like Tarantino’s, even if they are not commonly seen in the U.S.

“It can be deadly,” explained Steigbigel, “but if caught early enough we have quite good treatments for most [strains of fungal meningitis] if not all of them.”

Tarantino was lucky enough to have had his infection caught in early stages, given only enough time to cause minor hearing loss. Still, when he first was released from the hospital last year, his wife said she and her family still had doubts he was going to recover due to his grim state.

“I was afraid to let myself be happy,” explained Roseann. “Because he was so sick when he first came home, I still had doubts… and it took some time to realize he was getting better and to let myself be happy.”

Roseann said that the day she started seeing frank getting better was the day he started doing work around the house once again. After the super-storm Sandy hit the Tarantino’s neighborhood and surrounding regions this past October, Frank, a retired electrician, started helping out with repairs.

“When he works… he was better, he was actually better,” said Roseanne looking to her husband. “Because when you work, being able to do what you’ve done your whole life, it’s a great feeling.”

These days, Tarantino looks nothing like how you would expect a man who is over a year past his death-date to look. He softly smiles as he kisses his wife on the cheek after she comes home, and that smile alone is not the smile of a man expecting to die.

“I’m very happy to see [Frank] doing so well, he has recovered so much,” said Wu.

According to Wu, Tarantino is steadily becoming perfectly healthy, and his cancers, both breast and prostate, have not re-emerged.

Tarantino calls what happened to him the product of a miracle and the determination and insight of “one smart man.”

Wu calls the Tarantino case “a very challenging case that we can all learn from.” He hopes that this case sets examples for speedy, life-saving diagnoses to come.

*Click here to view the related Stony Brook University press release.*

More on Fungal Meningitis:

Tarantino’s infection, Cryptococcus, and other forms of fungal meningitis are rarely seen in the U.S.

According to Steigbigel, this is in-part due to the fact it is only tested for if it presents a reason to test. If masked by other illness, as is often the case with patients whose immune systems have been compromised, it is not seen.

Still, early October, a large number of infections began to be seen all across the U.S.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on October 6, 2012, the New England Compounding Center (NECC) voluntarily recalled products distributed from its facility in Framingham, Massachusetts that were causing fungal infections across the U.S.  The products, primarily contaminated syringes, bottles, medications, and ointments, according to an official recall list released by the NECC, cause a range of infections, their severity dependent on the prior immune state of those infected.

Ameridose, a company partnered with NECC that commonly shared materials, also recalled all of its unexpired products in circulation soon after initial news of the fungal outbreak and initial recall.

CDC and state health departments have estimate that approximately 14,000 patients may have received injections from the three implicated lots and nearly 97% have now been contacted for further follow-up.

According to the CDC, as of Nov. 30, 2012, this outbreak is still under ongoing investigation, but those who have been discovered to be infected are now being treated, and remaining contaminated products are being located and disposed of with the help of the Food and Drug Administration.

The smells of gasoline and ocean brine fill the air as residents of Belle Harbor, N.Y., attempt to rebuild their lives in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

The Rockaway Peninsula was battered by the post-tropical cyclone on October 29, along with the southern shore of New York and New Jersey. Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on October 26, following which all railway lines, airports and bridges were shut down or closed.

Directly after Sandy cut a destructive path through the South Shore of Long Island and into Staten Island, cleanup efforts began in earnest, with volunteer groups and residents teaming up to remove sand and debris from their homes. Many, especially in Breezy Point, had gone up in flames.

But now, more than a month later, the streets have emptied except for residents remaining in their powerless, heatless and waterless homes and those who are trying to provide them essential aid.

“We’re 30 days out and people in the surrounding areas are back to their normal lives, but people down here don’t have homes, heat, hot water, no food or anything like that,” said Jennifer DeLuca, 29, a volunteer from Ozone Park. “There’s no stores here to go purchase anything, so without these donations we have people going hungry.”

Small businesses all along the peninsula have suffered. Volunteer and Rockaway resident Evan Abel, 29, calls the conundrum of shop owners and their customers a “chicken and egg” problem, saying, “Even when people move back there’s no businesses open, and the businesses are afraid to open because there are no residents to support them.

Rose Cha, 57, the owner of Harbor Cleaning, has been a Rockaway resident for 24 years. The basement and first floor of her home flooded, but the real devastation came in the form of her business, where she lost everything as it burned.

“Everything is so mess, and so hard,” she said. “I don’t know when I have to reopen the store. I don’t care about my house, but my store, what can I do?”

The loss of her computer inhibits Cha from determining which of the clothes she removed from the cleaners are whose, and reflects a greater theme that has been prevalent throughout recovery and cleanup efforts: an inability to communicate.

Coordinated cleanup efforts between the many grassroots relief organizations working in their immediate communities was very hard to organize in the early days of the disaster, according to New York Cares staff member Whitney Seiler.

“For a time, cell phone service was really difficult, many of us don’t have Internet access at our stations,” said Seiler, a Brooklyn resident. “More and more now we are coming together and really trying to reach out to each other, really trying to create a unified relief effort so that when Winter comes we can work together to stretch across the Rockaways and help a larger community all together.”

Seiler is stationed at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, a central location in Belle Harbor that has sought to aggregate volunteer and government resources in one place since the earliest days of the disaster.

While many of the predominantly Irish-Catholic residents surrounding the parish have taken up the task of recovery for themselves, St. Francis de Sales is, according to Seiler, “largely staffed by people who came from other places, saw what was happening here and just stayed and decided to help.”

One exception is Rockaway resident Evan Abel, 29, who returned from India to help his hometown recover and rebuild after Superstorm Sandy.

“I’ve been working to coordinate efforts between the different groups that are here and to basically take care of my smaller neighborhood in terms of connecting dots with resources,” said Abel. “Giving electricians, plumbers, mold remediation, contractors’ names to people that are still looking for them.”

To facilitate communication within the community, volunteers at St. Francis routinely go door-to-door to distribute information to residents, but sometimes even that turns out to be faulty. Information that may have been true two weeks ago, according to Abel, quickly becomes misleading as conditions and circumstances change.

“You can’t get a clear answer here,” he said.

While both volunteers and residents lack access to the Internet, information is difficult to spread. Community meetings are held each Sunday at the church, at 3 p.m. for residents and 5 p.m. for businesses. Weekly meetings for grassroots volunteer organizations are used to give updates and share information, but the government has so far been difficult to coordinate with.

“I don’t know what they’re doing and I don’t understand their timeframe,” Abel said.  His concern is that much of the government organizations are doing the same work as the civilians are, but not working together stops the progress of the entire community.

Whitney Seiler, however, believes that the grassroots organizations and government efforts all play their own part in the “Relief Ecosystem.”

“We’re all driving different-sized vehicles, we’re all going to be arriving at different times, and we’re all going to be contributing different amounts to the effort,” she said. “But we are all working together to do that, and as a result I think it gives the Rockaways the best chance of rebuilding if we all understand that we all play different roles in it.”

Rockaway Beach Boardwalk: The Backbone of a Broken Community from jodie mann on Vimeo.

Wade Bagwell, spent the morning of Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012 playing on the concrete skeleton of what once was the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk.

While to the 8-year-old the cement pillars presented a perfect opportunity to practice his balance-beam running, to many Rockaway residents the wreckage of the once bustling boardwalk, described as “the backbone of the community,” is a painful reminder of what has been lost.

“It’s like looking at a friend that died on the side of the road and is still sitting there,” said John Cori, a Rockaway resident and founder of the Friends of Rockaway Beach organization. “It’s horrible to look at.”

The boardwalk, which has been a staple in the community since the 1930s, was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy on Monday, Oct. 29.  In all areas west of Beach 86^th  Street the Boardwalk was completely lifted off its cement base  by waves and dropped several feet away.  Large parts of the boardwalk were dragged blocks away from the beach as flooding and wind continued to ravage the community.

“There were bits of boardwalk underneath my car,” said Kathleen Costanza who lives in an apartment overlooking the beach. “It was everywhere.”

Costanza, who watched the storm from her fifth floor window said the giant wave that dislodged the boardwalk was “the scariest thing” she’s ever seen. Even over a month later the memory still haunts her.

“All of the sudden this tremendous wave just came right over,” Costanza said.  “It scares me until today…I will never, ever, ever forget that.”

Like many residents, Costanza said she feels the loss of the boardwalk is detrimental to the community.

“ [The boardwalk is] everything. Walking, just sitting here talking to neighbors and even the people that come here in the summer and making so many friends just talking to people,” Costanza said of the role it has always played in the community. “It’s everything. It’s the center of Rockaway.”

Some residents however, are concerned that the boardwalk may bot be rebuilt.

Joe DiGiorno, a resident of the Belle Harbor area of the Rockaway peninsula spent the weeks following the superstorm collecting broken bits of the boardwalk so he can build a new one. In his own backyard.

“I want my own because we’ll never have one here again,” DiGiorno said while sitting on the cement foundation where the boardwalk once stood, his collection of debris piled next to him.

“I’ve lived here 40 years, I need my boardwalk,” DiGiorno said of his project, which was originally suggested by his daughter.

Even Congressmen Gregory Meeks, of New York’s sixth congressional district who lived in Rockaway for more than 25 years, was nostalgic about days at the beach with his children.

“I used to get up in the mornings with my daughters when they were young and just walk along the beach,” Meeks said.

Meeks described the boardwalk as an “integral” part of the community.

“Rockaway is one of the most beautiful beaches there is and the boardwalk is part of that,” he said. ““When you think Rockaway you think ocean and when you think ocean you think boardwalk.”

The 30-foot-wide strip now covered by the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk was given to the New York City Parks Department in 1911 as a gift from The Rockaway Park Improvement Company. Construction on the boardwalk began in 1922 and lasted two years, according to the City of New York Parks and Recreation website. The boardwalk really began to draw in crowds in the 1930’s when the Marine Parkway Bridge, Cross Bay Bridge and the elevated subway tracks into the rockaways made it more accessible to non-rockaway residents.

Cori, whose organization is dedicated to the betterment of Rockaway beaches, the boardwalk and recreation areas, feels the boardwalk is an essential part of the community, and must be rebuilt.

“The boardwalk is one of the main things people live in Rockaway for,” Cori said. “It’s one of the only free public access boardwalks and I cannot wait to ride my bike and skateboard along it again.”

According to Meeks however there will be many discussions between government officials before any progress can be made. City of New York Parks and Recreation Department, which is responsible for the restoration will have to collaborate with the Governors office to determine what standards will have to be met, and what materials will be used.

“That conversation has to take place soon,” Meeks said. “I would hope that we’ll see some real signs of recovery by the time summer and spring hits.”

Friends of Rockaway Beach, however, is concerned that Bloomberg and The Parks Department are worrying about the wrong things. According to Meeks, Bloomberg has been promoting the idea of a concrete boardwalk as a less destructible alternative. Cori and his group say this is the wrong approach, and will not help protect the community.

“Rock jetties keep the sand on the beach so the beach is longer,” Cori said. “You can clearly see the difference, east of 86^th the boardwalk is sill there, damaged but there, and to the west it’s gone.”

A concrete boardwalk would protect the boardwalk, but jetties would protect the whole community, according to Zina Skachinsky a volunteer with Allied Rockaway Foundation for Animal Recreation and Fitness, a group that has worked closely with Friends of Rockaway Beach on several beach related projects.

“The jetties are the best solution because they help keep sand on the beach and keep the beach longer,” Skachinsky said. “They say they’re still researching, but you can see it right here.”

On Sunday, Dec. 2 the group held a rally to “Demand the Sand.” According to a press release given out at the event the location, at Beach 86^th Street at the end of the existing rock jetty field, was chosen to make a point.

“This will physically prove to every elected official and city, state and federal agency how the rock jetties with long full beaches, lessened the impact of Hurricane Sandy’s massive storm surge,” the release stated.

Friends of Rockaway Beach has been advocating for rock jetties aggressively for years. Cori has been actively haring research and educating the community. Someone even went so far as to graffiti “John Cori warned you” on the remnants of a handball court.

“We live here, we know what’s best,” Skachinsky said. “But we need everyone’s support, then we can really get things done.”

Many residents are determined to see this vital part of their community restored to its full glory, if not better than it’s ever been.

“They have to rebuild,” Costanza said. “They have to rebuild it stronger and better.”

On Again, Off Again: Tattoo Removal on the Rise from Philly Bubaris on Vimeo.

A tattoo that reads “Jimmye Boy,” in thick black ink on her right forearm reminds Danielle Serra, 33, of a failed marriage. The tattoo represents regret, wasted time and money.

“It’s not even the pain of the tattoo removal that hurts. It’s the fact that it is a $100 tattoo and it is going to cost like three grand to get it off,” said the Holtsville, N.Y., resident. “That sucks.”

After four tattoo removal treatments, high school math and physics teacher Glenn Habibi, 27, of Port Jefferson, N.Y., still has the word, “Veritas,” which means truth in Latin, rooted under the skin on his right forearm. It is more of a shadow compared to what it once was, but is still very visible. He is hoping by this spring he will be able to wear short sleeves to work.

“[The tattoo] does represent when I was younger and sillier I suppose, but I don’t really want to be reminded of that anymore,” Habibi said.

The U.S. Food and Drug administration estimates that as many as 45 million Americans have at least one tattoo, about 15 percent of the U.S. population. With tattoos increasing in popularity, a secondary trend has sprung up: tattoo removal.

From 2011 to 2012, there was a 32 percent increase in laser tattoo removal procedures, according to The Patient’s Guide, a medical journal that provides medical information about aesthetic treatments.

A Harris Interactive poll done in 2012 puts the tattoo remorse rate at 14 percent, one main reason being employment and the other being the name of a previous relationship still stuck on the skin.

Fran Giambanco, multi-course trainer at Dale Carnegie, a leadership program that teaches professionals how to improve their performance in the corporate world, and executive director of a financial institution, said that major companies tend to shy away from people with visible tattoos.

“I feel that if you are in the business world you need to look the part – and tattoos are not part of that image in a corporate setting,” she said. “If I had two people and I had to choose one, I would choose the one without the visible tattoos.”

Sergeant Frank Cucinello, 26, is a U.S. Marine recruiter in Smithtown, N.Y. He said the tattoo policy of the Marines is that any tattoos graphic in nature, half sleeves, which cover the entire upper or lower arm, tattoos above the collar or on the face are disqualifying.

“They cannot join the Marines,” he said.

Any tattoos below the elbow that are bigger than the palm of your hand are looked down upon and soldiers may be written up. Before becoming a part of the U.S. Marines, all tattoos, big or small, are looked at by the FBI to ensure that they are not gang related.

This policy only came into effect in 2008, so Marines such as Cucinello were grandfathered in with a half-sleeve tattoo.

The reason behind this is that the U.S. Marine Corps is looking for people with high moral standards to join the force and that has a lot to do with image. They want citizens to feel comfortable approaching a member of the Corps and if they are covered in ink from head to toe, Marines look like a threat instead of a source of comfort, according to Cucinello.

Tattoo removal, though becoming a more common and sometimes necessary procedure, costs approximately ten times the price of the tattoo according to Dr. Glenn Messina, tattoo removal specialist and owner of Messina Esthetic Medicine in Commack, N.Y., affectionately known as Dr. Undo Tattoo by some patients.

He says the standard treatment costs between $200 and $800 a session, and on average it takes about eight sessions to remove a single tattoo. But there is a reason for the high cost.

“The cost of the laser was $108,000 and the cost of maintaining these machines is about $800 a month,” he said.

Still, Messina started removing tattoos in 2007 and now has over 300 patients.

Tattoo artist at Inkpulsive Custom Tattooing in Ronkonkoma, N.Y., Anthony Osurac, 34, from Wantagh, N.Y., says that even though tattoo removal is now widely available, the procedure is not a thought that goes through a clients’ head while sitting in the chair.

“I don’t think it is something that people take lightly and certainly not lightly enough where they are thinking that this tattoo I can get on a whim just because I can get it removed,” he said. “While tattoo removal is working now, it still isn’t working 100 percent, it is still a really long process. It takes as much dedication as getting the tattoo.”

Under New York State law, laser tattoo removal is a medical procedure and must be performed by a doctor. The SPECTRA Q-switched laser is what Messina uses on his patients. It is an FDA approved laser that produces four different wavelengths to accommodate different skin types and tattoo colors, according to the manufacturer, Lutronic Inc., headquartered in Seoul, Korea.

The laser uses high intensity pulses of laser light to remove tattoo particles without harming the skin. Tattoo ink sits in the dermal layer, deep enough so the skin doesn’t shed. The ink is surrounded by scar tissue, which holds it in place.

With laser tattoo removal, the beam hits the skin with such velocity that the waves fracture the scar and then fracture the ink into pieces so tiny that the immune cells start breaking down the tattoo, leaving a faded image of what once was.

As Messina fires the laser, a loud snap bursts out of the skin: the sound of ink shattering. The smell of burning flesh seeps into the air with every pulse, though the effect on the skin is a white haze over the ink: the vapor coming from the heat of the laser.

A person getting a tattoo removed has flecks of ink in their lymph nodes, Messina said – the immune system carries the microscopic fragments and excretes them through the lymphatic system.

Every tattoo removal presents its own challenges. Blue and green ink are much more difficult to remove than red or black ink and white ink is impossible to erase. The lighter the color, the harder it is to take off.

Messina has a photo gallery of every patient’s tattoo, from the first treatment to the last, to show progress.

One album on his computer is labeled, “Holy cow!” In it is the photo of a patient that Messina turned away, with a tattoo of what looks like a blood-red demon, with lime-green eyes and black flaming hair spanning the entire back, from the bottom of the neck to the base of the spine.

Messina said it would have been physically unsafe to remove the tattoo and would cost $4,000 for a single treatment. The trauma to the skin would have been too much for the body to handle, even if the patient was on a strong dose of steroids.

But, it is not very often Messina sees tattoos like that. He said his average patient is a college-educated woman who has three to five tattoos and one she can no longer relate to.

“They got it at an earlier time, they loved it, they thought it was cute, but it is just not part of their life anymore and they want it removed,” Messina said.

People today don’t get a tattoo thinking they will ever remove it, according to tattoo artist and owner of Inkpulsive, Jennifer Andersen, 35, of Lake Grove, who has been tattooing for 11 years.

“It is kind of like a photo album of your life on your skin,” she said. “So, you may not like every part of it, but that doesn’t mean you want to forget those memories completely.”

But some people, like Serra, are anxious to remove a piece of their photo album.

“Never again will I get an impulsive tattoo or tattoo someone’s name on my body,” she said. “Never.”

Granted, this was a difficult class, but I’ve learned so much and grown as a photographer and videographer enough to warrant the amount of work given. Before this class I had only shot video with a dslr camera once or twice; now, I feel confident shooting anything with my dslr.

If you want to succeed in this class, don’t just do what’s required of you – put in some extra hours here and there. Professor Ahmad offers several opportunities for extra credit, and some of them are actually really fun, like shooting pictures at Occupy Wall Street. And having an extra credit laying around means that you’re covered in case you have a really bad shoot and get a lower grade then you hoped.

And remember to go to Professor Ahmad’s office hours. When he says to stop by so he can look at your work, he actually means it. Take 20 minutes out of your week and stop by to talk with him, because you’ll often find out that the shot you thought was really good needs some work, or something you overlooked is worth adding.

Above all else, remember something: If someone doesn’t like your photo or video, it isn’t something to be taken as a personal offense. Too many people get scared off from this class because they know their work is going to be critiqued in front of the rest of the class. But if you’re afraid to hear constructive criticism, you’ll never get any better. Take class critiques as a way to make yourself better, and you’ll be a better journalist for it. After a while, you may actually appreciate it when someone points out something small and seemingly insignificant, because it will help you improve in the long run.

So overall, I thought this was a really interesting class and definitely worth the work. Just remember that your effort is a direct reflection of what you’ll get on your final grade, so don’t expect to skate through this class. If you make it through you’ll look back and realize that everything you did was worth it after all.

How can the class be improved? I don’t know. To say, “Make it less hard!” wouldn’t make sense, because the challenge of this class is the whole point. Journalism isn’t easy — if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you can’t make it through this class, good luck out there! All of the shooting we did out of class as a group was helpful and made the “real world” seem less scary. I do agree with other students’ suggestions that maybe we should have some small video assignments before being sent out for our first projects. The end results of those first projects would be much better. If I think of anything else I will add more later. But for now, that’s all I’ve got.

My advice for future students: be ready… this is not a class you can coast through and push under the rug. It takes a lot of time out of class and a lot of focus in class. You have to be willing to spend that extra time or you will make it through without taking advantage of the learning opportunities. To be given a $2,000 camera to borrow for an entire semester is truly a gift. You won’t get that anywhere else. School stinks sometimes and I can’t even count how many times I just thought I would drop out, or that I didn’t care. But, school is for learning and learning takes dedication, especially when learning multimedia journalism. So I held onto my camera and kept my focus, telling myself I could get through it. And I did… and I don’t think I did too bad either!

But really, it’s amazing how quickly time flies. I can’t believe that it is the end of the semester, mostly because I can’t believe I made it through. Well, almost… there are still two days left, and a very important project to deliver.