Still Recovering, Public Housing Tenants Prepare for Next Wave of Storms

The air hung thick late Wednesday afternoon in the midst of public housing complexes in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn. Local residents were quietly traveling, their spirits as heavy as the air.

Hurricane season begins Saturday and experts predict the east coast will see three to six major hurricanes by year's end. Con Edison has invested in safety precautionary measures. New York City's Office of Emergency Management has said it will redefine evacuation zones within the city. But what are residents doing?

Synofia Jacobs, a resident of Red Hook public housing all her life, returned home after giving birth to her third child two days before Superstorm Sandy peaked.

"It was really hectic," she said. "No hot water. I had just come home with the baby, trying to make things work for her in the dark. It was really tragic. It was really bad."

Jacobs said her apartment leaks and she does not trust the electrical wiring.

"The wiring is really damaged and [New York City] needs to come together and do Red Hook over," she said. "Whatever Red Hook needs to fix or needs to be done, they just need to come together and fix it."

On her future in Red Hook: "I just want to get my kids out of here, to tell you the truth. There's really nothing to say about it ... work, save and move on."

Carlos Herrea has been the manager of C-Town Supermarkets for Savings, a small grocery store in the Red Hook neighborhood, for the past 20 years. He had never seen a storm quite like Superstorm Sandy. While his store did not flood, Herrea said he did lose power for a few days, which meant he had to close down and discard certain inventory items.

The store serves as a kind of lifeline for the community in times of need, Herrea said. He is now looking to invest in a generator so that his store may stay open during power outages and he may get supplies to residents.

"I want to prepare, [get] a generator or something," he said. "Maybe I can open not the whole day, but I can help with whatever I have in the store."

And then there are some that share the simple sentiment of Elizabeth Clark.

When asked whether she was concerned of upcoming storms, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "No -- not really. What's going to be is going to be. You can't stop it and so, hey, why worry about it?"

New York City's Housing Authority has said its reaching out to those who were impacted by Sandy in preparation for the upcoming hurricane season.