President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie met last month with people affected by Hurricane Sandy in Brigantine, along the New Jersey coast.
President Obama flew over areas of Queens that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy and stopped on Staten Island on Thursday to meet with emergency workers and families whose lives were upended by the devastating storm.
On a morning of thin, almost hazy sun —a bright contrast to the ominous, slate-gray sky just before and just after the storm hurled a wall of water against the coast — the president flew to John F. Kennedy International Airport and boarded a helicopter that ttook him over the Rockaway Peninsula and on to Staten Island, still partly flooded. The storm charged up the Atlantic Coast late last month, killing more than 100 people along the way, with most of the deaths in low-lying sections of New York and New Jersey. It left millions without power and thousands in need of homes.
The White House said the president would visit a federal disaster recovery center on Staten Island, where the enormous surge that accompanied the storm battered homes and exacted a particularly high death toll. Of the 43 deaths in New York City attributed to the storm, 23 occurred on Staten Island.
As the president’s helicopter landed at Miller Field, a former Army Air Corps installation in the New Dorp section of Staten Island that has become a center for relief efforts, some Staten Islanders who had endured the storm said they were at best indifferent about his visit.
“I don’t care that he’s here,” said Steve Pasciak, 47, who was on his way to speak with insurance company representatives. “I mean, I think he’s done a good job. He responded quickly. He could’ve come to Staten Island sooner.”
Mr. Pasciak said a three-foot wall of water had rushed through his house as the storm tore by; he said the electricity and heat were not turned back on until Tuesday. He said he would not wait to see the president. “I need to go back and start throwing stuff out,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do.”Mr. Obama had been expected to visit New York in the days after the storm struck on Oct. 29, but Mr. Bloomberg asked him not to come because he worried that the visit would be disruptive as the city took the first steps toward recovery. Mr. Obama toured the decimated New Jersey coast with Gov. Chris Christie, a visit infused with political overtones as the two put on a display of bipartisan harmony in the days before what was expected to be a close presidential election.
In New Jersey on Oct. 31, Mr. Obama saw storm-ruined boardwalks, burning houses, even a roller coaster that was underwater. The president praised Mr. Christie, a Republican who had been scheduled to campaign for Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. “I want you to know your governor is working overtime,” the president said. Mr. Obama also told New Jerseayns whose homes had been flooded or destroyed that “we are here for you and will not forget” and that he would not let red tape slow the recovery. “We will not quit until this is done,” he said.
Mr. Bloomberg, who had been critical of the president and the Republican nominee, later endorsed Mr. Obama, saying the hurricane had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign. The mayor said that Mr. Obama was the better candidate to deal with climate change. “While the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it,” the mayor declared in an editorial for Bloomberg View, “the risk that it may be —given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”
The president’s trip came less than 24 hours after Ms. Gillibrand and New York’s other senator, Charles E. Schumer, asked for up to $1 billion in federal aid to rebuild the coastline — more than 120 miles in all, from Rockaway Beach in Queens to Montauk Point, at the eastern end of Long Island.
Mr. Cuomo had earlier announced that he would request $30 billion in federal aid for storm-related expenses, including everything from repairing bridges, tunnels and subway lines to paying emergency workers’ overtime costs. The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said aboard Air Force One on the way to New York that the administration had no specific response because it had not received details of the request.
