Get ready for Hurricane Sandy, Part 2: Mold.
Three weeks after the superstorm struck, signs of her menacing legacy can already be seen in thousands of homes across the flood zone.
You’ll see it in the form of dime-sized, fuzzy, green spores clinging to chairs, black streaks of toxic mold lining the corners of dressers and two-inch-thick blankets of fungi covering garbage dumped along the road.
Any way you slice it, it’s all mold — and it can kill you.
“We’re going to have mold competing against each other,” said Dr. Ginger Chew from the Centers for Disease Control, who specializes in the health risks of mold inhalation. “Mold can grow overnight.”
And it won’t stop unless you make it stop.
Michael Scotto’s 78-year-old mother’s home on West End Ave. in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, was filled to the ceiling with seawater and sewage after Hurricane Sandy smacked the waterfront neighborhood.
Now, fuzzy mold spores are everywhere, and the musty smell cannot be missed, even from outside the house.
Scotto’s neighbors, who declined to give their names, took immediate action to de-mold and disinfect their basement that served as an office and a play room.
“I was working when the water started flowing from the bathroom,” said the neighbor, who gave her name only as Ilana. “I opened the door and sewage was gushing out of the toilet, flooding the whole basement.”
The cleanup company left no spore behind, and even brought in negative pressure fans like those used in tuberculosis facilities to suck the air clean.
“Thousands of homes need to be treated. Thousands,” said John Greenway, president of Servpro, whose crews have been working around the clock. “All of them here had water come up, filth, fecal matter and it’s very wet still.
“There was a house I couldn’t get to for over a week,” he added. “It was cold then, and then it warmed up for a couple of days and that was bad. Then mold grew. Everything was very wet.”
Mold can cause a multitude of health effects, including severe allergies, asthma and potentially devastating and deadly illnesses for people with weak immune systems, like many among the elderly, and anyone undergoing chemotherapy.
As a result, people with compromised immune systems should not take part in any remediation efforts — and even healthy people should wear respirators, eye masks and heavy-duty gloves and apparel when coming in contact with potentially toxic fungi.
Proper mold removal can be pricy, but is in no way a luxury.
John Mezzina, vice president of Synatech, a mold, lead and asbestos removal specialty company serving New York City and New Jersey, said the typical 1,000-square-foot space that does not need to be gutted, would cost between $1,800 and $2,200 to be fully dried, sprayed and sealed.
“Mold doesn’t always smell,” he said. “You may not even see it if it’s inside the walls. As those colonies are growing, sporilation is occurring, which means they’re literally shooting out microscopic spores into the air.”
De-molding a big home, like those along the Jersey Shore and in Manhattan Beach, can cost more than $25,000.
The biggest danger, Mezzina said, is underestimating the danger of mold.
“Asbestos, to me, is far less dangerous to the general public than mold,” Mezzina said. “Mold can have immediate and severe effects.”
Marty Novitsky, a lifelong resident of Sheepshead Bay who was a local hero in the aftermath of the storm, carrying the elderly out of their homes, has had his power back for two days after three weeks of cold and darkness.
“I am afraid for everyone because they don’t know what is happening right in front of their faces. I am scared for my life, too,” Novitsky says. “Who knows what even a few months or a few years could do. What if in a few years I get lung cancer and find out it was from the mold? I can’t even sleep about it.”