It was a year ago today that several of my relatives, in harm’s way of Hurricane Sandy, literally ran for their lives, fanning out from flood zones into the darkness of a city that quickly came to resemble a necropolis. Their homes and many others have not yet been fully repaired, and, worse yet, the toll on their health was even more severe. Two members of my immediate family who were in the storm’s path nearly died in emergency rooms in the ten months after the ferocious storm, suffering from unusual bacterial illnesses that may have been caused by the flood waters or clean-up efforts. No one’s sure. Having spent nearly two months visiting hospitals, I can’t quite count the number of patients and medical personnel who told me they still hadn’t rebuilt their houses, hadn’t yet recovered their health, their wits. The storm doesn’t end when the winds and rains die down–that’s just the beginning. And I will never forget how Paul Ryan and others voted against Sandy relief as people desperately searched for help. How many of these people self-identify as Christians when campaigning?

From Amy Davidson at the New Yorker blog:

“Well over a hundred people were killed by the storm, and the indirect toll, though harder to measure, was greater. The mortality rate in that Coney Island nursing home, according to a new report from NY1, was higher in the weeks and months after Sandy than it had any right to be. Since the storm, evacuation maps have been redrawn, subway tunnels are still being repaired (after a heroic effort to reopen them in those first days), and New York is inching toward a discussion of what a world of climate change, with rising sea levels and more extreme weather, means for a metropolis built on one of the planet’s best natural harbors. But perhaps the greatest mistake would be to reminisce only about the ways that the storm created unity and division, rather than looking critically at how it interacted with the city’s persistent inequalities. There is a reason that the tale of two cities has been one of the motifs of this year’s mayoral campaign—and it has nothing to do with just where the lights went out.”