A $170 million effort by the federal government helped the island recover in the aftermath of the 2012 hurricane, but residents recognize that another storm could wash all the progress away.
By Gregory SchmidtApril 29, 2022
After Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Eastern Seaboard in 2012, Jared Della Valle took action. The storm had destroyed one of his homes on Fire Island, a narrow strip of land off Long Island, and damaged another. So he decided it was time to move.
“I picked up my house and moved it down the block,” said Mr. Della Valle, the chief executive and a co-founder of Alloy Development, an architecture firm in Brooklyn.
The motivation behind Mr. Della Valle’s decision to move his damaged five-room house 150 feet — no easy task — was a $170 million effort by the federal government to fortify the Fire Island shoreline. As part of the project, 41 houses on Fire Island were slated for demolition or relocation, including Mr. Della Valle’s home in Ocean Bay Park, a community heavily affected by the storm.