Ronnie and her husband have lived at 38 Weber Avenue in Sayreville for 42 years.  They have three grown children they raised in this house, their 2 boys have recently been living at home.  Their beautiful ranch style home has been hit by flood waters before, but never like this.

“After the 1992 flood and we fixed the damage on our home, my husband said we should sell.  Other homes in the area were selling for $400,000.  We could buy something small and have a nest egg for retirement.”  But Ronnie had lived there so long.  She has all her friends and family around her, she couldn’t leave.

The night Sandy hit, Ronnie had gone to her daughter’s home about 30 minutes away – but her son and husband decided to stay behind with a friends row boat in the yard incase it got to bad and they needed to get out.  In the dark of night, tidal surge came from the river.    The water inside their home came rushing in.  In a matter of 9 minutes, her husband and her son were in over 4 feet of water and knew they had to get out.  So they headed to the row boat and spent over an hour rowing against the current and wind to get to higher ground.  They got past their elderly neighbors home, she was crouched on her counter top in her kitchen screaming for help.  Then they heard her fall in the water.  They knew they couldn’t get to her, the current was to strong, they needed to get to higher ground where they could call for help.

The next day, Ronnie’s family all headed back to survey the damage.  It was worse than they imagined, it was gone – all gone.  The water in front of their ranch style home at the height of the storm was 11 feet deep.  The water inside there home rose to 4 feet.  Mud, water debris was every where.  And the worse part, the foundation had collapsed in the back corner of the house. All there belongings gone, no furniture, no cloths and they used lots of bleach to salavage the little they could.

You would think that it couldn’t get any worse, well  for Ronnie’s family it did.  Read Part 2 next week….