FEMA housing moving into place for Sandy victims
(CBS News) Frustration is growing for thousands of superstorm Sandy's victims.
There are two Federal Emergency Management Agency temporary housing areas in New Jersey. The tent city in Oceanport, N.J. is the new home for 750 emergency workers and about 60 displaced New Jersey residents. Many storm victims living in the FEMA housing in Oceanport are elderly or disabled. There are 20 large tents there, heated by generators, along with hot food and laundry facilities. For now, it's the only home they have.
Hundreds of thousands more are also waking up to a cold house Friday, 12 days after Sandy hit their coastline.
In wintry Somerset County in northern New Jersey, utility crews are still days away from restoring everyone's power. Wednesday's nor'easter was a setback across the Northeast.
Adela Bolet, of Teaneck, N.J., had just gotten her electricity back Monday. She said, "It was such a relief, oh my God, it was like returning to civilization."
But that relief didn't last long. "All of a sudden, poof!" she said. "And there we are -- back in the Middle Ages."
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted Long Island Power Authority or LIPA -- the power company that serves Long Island -- complaining it mismanaged the crisis. Cuomo said, "Part of it is the management, and the performance, which has been unacceptable. And they failed, they have failed the consumers."
Sandy's destruction has left thousands of people homeless for the foreseeable future. FEMA estimates 101,000 people in New York and New Jersey qualify for hotel subsidies and 56,000 people qualify for help renting a new home or fixing a damaged one. And the agency's moving in several hundred mobile homes into the hurricane zone.
N.J. Gov. Chris Christie said, "I mean, I can't build them apartments right now, in the next week, so we're gonna get them as close to their homes as we can get them. But I can't wave a magic wand and create housing."
Sandy devastated New Jersey communities like Seaside and Long Beach Island.
On Friday, some Seaside residents will be allowed back in their homes to survey damage and, as mandated at a town hall meeting, retrieve no more than two suitcases of belongings per house.
For Mark Strassmann's full report, watch the video above.