3 neighborhood, everyone was removing everything from their homes and putting it out onto the streets. It was like a big graveyard of everyone’s personal belongings from mattresses to couches to dining sets and family albums. It was a sad sight. The contents of entire apartments were on the street. Everything was soaked and destroyed. There was no electricity, no water. It was cold; there was no heat. On our block we were fortunate, electricity came back within a week, but many of my neighbors went many months without heat in the dead of winter. Q5: Did any of your neighbors lose loved ones? A5: Fortunately no, not to my knowledge. But thousands of people who live in the Red Hook Houses, project housing subsidized by the government, were deeply affected. I would consider these communities the equivalent of the urban poor in the Philippines. They were left with no heat, hot water or electricity for months that winter. Some buildings are thirteen (13) stories high, with elevators that did not work because of the lack of power making access to food, water, and heat nearly impossible. The government response to the Red Hook Houses was slow, disorganized, and lacking as a result of common neglect of the government to respond to poorer communities in need. As a result, residents’ health and safety were compromised for a long period of time. Q6: Were you able to see the actual wrath of the hurricane? A6: It was really dark, but I could hear the wrath. It reminded me of Hurricane George in Puerto Rico, hearing objects flying and hitting walls of buildings and crashing on the ground. When I texted Tina, I could sense that she was terrified. She could see from her window the parked cars get flooded in by the storm surge and starting to move with the water. It was especially scary for her as she lived next to electrical posts and many were combusting as the storm progressed. Q7: How did your experience with hurricane Sandy affect you, if any? A7: In the direct sense, I saw what it looked like to be a rapid responder in a way. We had a neighbor friend who lived in a garden apartment and she had evacuated to stay with family in Connecticut. Her building was marked to be demolished, so Tina and I had to quickly get all of her things out of her apartment immediately. It was not clear also how stable buildings were in the neighborhood after the storm. I think there is some virtual trauma I have blocked out of my mind and it is something I hope to not bear witness to again even though that is not a realistic hope considering the times we live in. There is an insecurity of seeing how we are not heading in a positive direction with the way corporations are often given free reign and governments both in the Philippines and the United States not really addressing this concern of the people most impacted by corporate power. Additionally, you could feel a great sense of economic inequality -- there was an exodus of people leaving Red Hook to escape disaster conditions we endured