[by:¿É¿ÉÓ¢ÓïÍø¡«m.moreplr.com]
[00:00.00]This week marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. 
[00:04.01]And here in New York City, the recovery has been very uneven.
[00:06.89]It's something that photographer Nathan Kensiger has documented in a series of photo essays for the website, Curbed.
[00:13.07]In this waterfront community in southern Queens, flooding caused a fire that burned more than 100 homes.
[00:19.12]It was kind of a wasteland, it had really just burned out a huge section of this neighborhood. 
[00:24.15]All around you, you were surrounded just by the smoking remains of these homes that had been completely destroyed by the storm.
[00:31.12]This is what it looked like a year ago. 
[00:33.91]And this is what it looks like today.
[00:36.14]It was a shock to see how much they had rebuilt, it was pretty amazing to see. 
[00:39.89]It had gone from being completely burned out and nothing there, to row upon row of houses.
[00:46.14]But several other shore communities here in Staten Island have gone in the opposite direction. 
[00:50.93]Right after the storm, Kensinger met Jean Laurie.
[00:53.66]Her house had been very damaged by the storm, 
[00:56.22]but she had set up out front of her home this whole station to help give people food and water and warm clothes. 
[01:02.52]She really wanted to bring her neighborhood back, even though Sandy had just happened.
[01:06.32]But two years later, her home site is nothing but this patch of grass and dirt. 
[01:11.17]The state offered her and other homeowners the pre-storm value of their home, 
[01:15.91]plus a 5-10 percent incentive with the idea that the area would be converted to a natural buffer zone against future storms.
[01:23.30]Jean Laurie accepted the offer.
[01:25.51]Kensinger has documented that while some New Yorkers who live by the shore have moved away from the water that did them such harm, not everyone has.
[01:34.36]Geographically, they are all right there on the water, and they're going to flood again. 
[01:37.90]And so some of them have chosen to come back and face that. 
[01:41.57]And some of them, you know, the decision was like, we can't live here anymore. 
[01:46.04]We know we're going to flood soon and we don't want to face that again.