A Staten Island woman who lost her husband and daughter during Sandy says she survived for a reason.
"It's very important I can't curl up in a corner, I have to get up every day and try," said Patricia Dresch of Tottenville, two years after Sandy.
"It's a miracle. I survived for a reason," she said. "Maybe to help someone down the road, give somebody courage to go on."
Dresch and her family ignored evacuation orders on Oct. 29, 2012, because their home had been looted when they left before Irene. So they stayed. They soon realized it was a mistake.
"I saw the waves are coming up across the street," she said. "I said 'Oh my God, what's happening?'"
She said she tried to grasp her 13-year old daughter Angela, but the storm waters soon became too intense. One wall of her Yetman Avenue home collapsed and her husband George was killed after getting whisked away in the flood.
“I'm holding onto Angela, and the water’s coming up over us, and we went under. I thought we were going to fall through the floor," she recalled.
"All of a sudden the wall just opened up, and we went out -- the whole yard," she said. "I don't know if I let go of her or she let go of me -- she just slipped away from me.”
Her daughter was found dead right in front of the property.
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Hours later, somehow, firefighters found Dresch hundreds of yards away, still breathing in the rubble. Her body temperature had dropped to 81 degrees. She was bruised and battered but had no broken bones.
Her spirit — and her heart — would need healing.
For months, she slept on a cot in her church, while working to keep her mind off the nightmare. Then the city bought her old property, and she used the money to buy a new house, about a mile north of where the tide surged.
She’s working, day by day, to recover emotionally -- thanks to friends, family and a new grandson. Her older daughter recently gave birth to baby Shea, named after the stadium.
But she’s never been back to her old block.
"Maybe 10 years from now. Right now I can't," she said. "I want to remember the block the way it was. I want to remember it in my mind the way it was."
