Digging Out in Long Beach: Sandy Cleanup Continues as New Storm Looms

John Wolf, president of Alexander Wolf & Company reported that four Long Beach buildings his firm manages lost their ground floors to flooding, and the residents have moved out.  Two other buildings in Oceanside are without power, and the residents are toughing it out.

“Lobbies have to be redone. Sand is around the cars like snowdrifts,” the manager reported. He described some of the eerie and sometimes selective devastation: “At 840 Shore Road, they basically had a couple of cars in the garages, but the building itself was totally destroyed. The ground floor and the first floor were flooded. One of my [condominium] buildings — the Ocean Club — lost their first floor, their pool, all their heating systems, their gym, their lobbies.” The owners have moved out.

Views from the roof of 25 Neptune Boulevard in Long Beach.

A building on Neptune Boulevard was the only one he encountered that seemed to be intact. Looks can be deceiving, however: Although the facade appeared undamaged, the super’s apartment and lobby had been flooded, and the boiler room lay beneath 15 feet of water. The underground garage remained unscathed, however, which Wolf attributes to “luck” — and the strong cinderblock walls around the garage base.

Wolf delivered three portable home generators (he had bought more than a dozen of them before the disaster) to help some of his properties get limited light and power back for lobbies and hallways for brief intervals. In Oceanside, resident manager Michael Mulhern and his assistant, Ed Russo, both of Alexander Wolf & Company, ran a portable generator to provide limited access to heat and water to the largely senior population on a periodic basis.

Photos by John Wolf, Alexander Wolf & Co.

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