Sandy's Secret Survivors: Old, Disabled and Invisible in the Rockaways

Two weeks after Hurricane Sandy, aid to the shut-in elderly and disabled in New York's Rockaways remains haphazard and inadequate.

I'm a volunteer with Occupy Sandy - a collective of volunteers, activists and citizens using the former networks of Occupy Wall Street to coordinate donations and on-the-ground hurricane relief in New York City's hardest hit areas.

Many of the residents are elderly or disabled - without working elevators, it is physically impossible for them to leave their apartments. Several of them haven't left their apartment since the storm. According to many of them, our crew of five volunteers was the first relief effort they had seen - meaning that until now, they had been subsisting on solely what they had stocked in their apartments before the storm.

Without power, residents can't turn on the lights or the heat. Inside, residents burn candles and light the dark stairwells with tiny, precious battery-operated flashlights. Going up and down the almost pitch-black stairwell simply to get out of their apartments, many could easily fall and become seriously injured. Outside, it's starting to regularly hit freezing and below temperatures, compounded by icy sea breezes. Inside, residents either risk carbon monoxide poisoning by heating their homes with gas stoves and ovens, or bundle up with blankets, winter coats and - if they have access - hot water bottles simply to be able to fall asleep.

Without running water, residents can't flush their toilets or bathe. Many haven't flushed their toilet in more than a week. Even if one can leave, it is no use because the only operational local convenience store ran out of bottled water days ago.

A few floors down, I meet Elizabeth Gerritsen—she is 94 years old, and though able-bodied, is frail, her bones shrunken with age. Like many of her neighbors, she had stayed at 711 Seagirt Boulevard through the storm, and once it had passed realized that without functional elevators, she was trapped with only the supplies that were left in her apartment.

When I knocked on her door, she was physically exhausted; she had just climbed back up 20 flights of stairs in an unfulfilling search for bottled water. I handed her my last bottle of Poland Springs.

"Oh this is wonderful," she said, beaming. "Now I can take a shower."

Only a certain, narrow demographic takes advantage of the distribution centers. They are relatively young and able-bodied enough to leave their apartments, walk to the distribution enters and carry supplies home. Many of them are parents of young children, and most of them are black. There are very few elderly people - black or white - and almost no disabled people.

It becomes apparent just how easily the needs - and presence - of those constricted by old age and disability can be rendered completely invisible.

FEMA finally arrived in the Rockaways the Thursday after the storm ...

Last week when a Nor'easter storm hit - threatening the Rockaways with freezing temperatures and another storm surge - the local FEMA offices closed, "due to the weather." 

They (photos of the storm damage) don't show what it is like to be almost completely immobile, and dependent only on those who knock on your door by pure chance.

They don't show what it is like to be rendered invisible.