According to Arthur Lighthall, general manager of the Breezy Point Cooperative Board, there are now about 40 home repairs under way in the 11697 ZIP code and a “whole slew of new filings being swiftly reviewed,” but it took until June to begin making those strides.

In 1948, New York City imposed its own mapped street system on top of the existing community, which defined the unfortunate houses in the burn zone as facing a “walkway” rather than a “mapped NYC street.”

For years, Breezy Point residents filed permit with the city's Board of Standards and Appeals to commence new construction, but when hundreds of Breezy homeowners suddenly appealed to the Board, the cooperative worked to expedite permit processing with a one-year waiver signed by Governor Cuomo this summer.

Breezy Point is a 500-acre cooperative located on the west end of the Rockaway peninsula and home to New Yorker's beloved Fort Tilden beach. Its residents, who are mostly hardworking blue-collar professionals such as policemen and firefighters, pay maintenance and security costs in order to keep the community private. It is quiet and inaccessible by public transportation, the kind of place where generations come to roost—Lighthall's parents, sister, sister-in-law, nephews and two daughters all live in Breezy Point.

The community, with its single-family wood-frame dwellings with wood-and-vinyl-clad doors and windows, was completely unprepared for a disaster of Sandy's magnitude. As if an omen, a tornado struck Breezy Point just a month prior to Sandy, evolving from a waterspout over the ocean to a funnel that landed near the Breezy Point Surf Club, where it ripped the roofs off cabanas, overturned a grill and caused a sensation in local news.

After Sandy, when Guy Carpenter finally managed to survey Breezy Point on Dec. 12, 2012, the surveyors decided not to scan the area on foot “given the degree of emergency support […] the lack of a suitable or safe place to leave the vehicle; and to avoid obstructing the recovery effort,” the risk specialist wrote in its damage report.

Breezy Point sustained the most concentrated damage in the Long Island area from the superstorm. 20 percent of homes had some sort of structural disruption; one of every 10 homes was severely damaged. Nearly every house in the area had insulated wood and household items piled out in front. About 350 homes were completely amputated from their foundations and had to be reconstructed from the ground up.

Six months later, in April 2013, 2,400 of the neighborhood's 2,800 buildings remained unoccupied. Donald Ritter, owner of the Breezy Point Surf Shop, partly blames the unfathomable cost of rebuilding, particularly for residents who owned summer homes or second homes in the community and did not receive federal aid for repairs. Many of them simply haven't returned.

“You're lucky if half the neighborhood is still here,” he says of his departing neighbors. “A lot of long-term residents, especially the elderly, have left.”

Some blame it on bureaucracy: Jonathan Gaska, District Manager of Queens Community Board 14, which encompasses Breezy Point, says the cooperative's building plans have to be agreed upon between its board and shareholders in a time-consuming process.

Lighthall points to a higher bureaucracy, saying, “In its advisory flood maps, the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) placed this community in a coastal zone where homes had to be 10 feet off the ground.”

In June, preliminary maps were released, lowering mandatory home elevation to six feet off the sidewalk and finalizing criteria on foundational requirements, giving residents and architects confidence to fill out the city's building paperwork.

All parties say lack of insurance clarity played some part in stalling Breezy Point's resuscitation.

“The real wild card is the flood insurance—the Biggert-Waters Act may end up having a bigger effect [on rebuilding] than Sandy,” says Gaska. For that, there is future storm protection through installing beach protections such as dunes and groins (hydraulic structures that limit water and sediment movement).

The Breezy Point Cooperative itself filed and was reimbursed for three commercial claims, as it had flood insurance on its damaged structures. Those in the burn zones, however, were not as lucky—if you can count luck in a disaster.

Lighthall says the insurers and insureds within the burn zone are locked in a debate and “pointing fingers at each other to decide whether the cause [of the blaze] was fire or flood.”

Ritter, a small business owner, only had liability insurance on his surf shop. He said he inquired about content insurance, but it would have cost him an unaffordable $800 per month. Not only did Ritter lose thousands on flooded inventory, but business has been down by 70 to 80 percent.

Ritter appealed to FEMA, who referred him to the Small Business Association (SBA) for a $25,000 disaster loan on which on which Ritter says the SBA offered him a six percent interest rate after several rounds of visits.

He tenaciously relocated to a temporary site about half a football field's distance from the shop Ritter has owned for 22 years. He says he has seen, slowly but surely, new houses going up in the burn area.

Resiliency is rebounding after being stretched to one's limits; to be tugged home by the need to stay close to what you love.

“If I walk away,” says Ritter, “I leave what took me two decades to build.”