...probably much of the money has gone to the casino interests in Atlantic City, and the boardwalk/amusement piers in Seaside Heights, and so on... But what has been most shocking to me, is how little has been done in a community like Mantoloking, a very wealthy area of oceanfront homes absolutely devastated by the storm... VERY little is going on over there even now, many of the properties look little different than they did in the immediate aftermath of Sandy...

It's amazing to me, having chartered in Thailand a mere 14 months after the tsunami devastated the Andaman Sea region in '04... We visited places like Phi Phi Don, that were virtually wiped out during that event, and yet the rebuilding had been so swift, you actually had to look pretty hard to see remaining evidence of the devastation... In comparison, the rate of progress here is moving at a snail's pace...

When I was about 12 years old, I met Katherine Hepburn one afternoon on the beach in front of this home she rented each summer in Mantoloking... We had family friends who owned a house nearby, and their daughter was acquainted with the legendary lady, and introduced us... The house was one of the more distinctive along that stretch of beach, one of the few perched high atop a dune, and virtually the only one still standing for hundred of meters in either direction along that bit of oceanfront. This spot was pretty much Ground Zero for Sandy's landfall on the Jersey coast, and very close to the spot where the largest breach in the barrier beach occurred, which resulted in the filling up of Barnegat Bay like a bathtub... Pretty compelling evidence that building on pilings is the way to go for coastal development, no?

This pic was taken on my first delivery along the coast, about 3-4 weeks after the storm... With the exception of a bit of dune replenishment that has taken place since, this place looks no virtually different today...