Build it stronger, build it safer, build it back, fast.
Welcome back to The Sunday Story and part two of our series on how badly we as a nation do at rebuilding after a big storm knocks us down.
Laura Sullivan and the crew at front line have been following along as North Carolina struggles to bounce back after Haleem.
In Houston, they learned you can't always engineer your way out of danger.
Now they're looking for answers in another storm prone area,
New York and New Jersey seacoast,
to see how they've done in the years since Superstorm Sandy.
The idea there, get out of the way of the water.
In 2012,
Superstorm Sandy sent more than 12 feet of water over communities along the coast of New York and New Jersey.
It was one of the worst flooding events in New York's history.
Recently,
we headed back to some of the neighborhoods we first visited in the aftermath of Sandy.
And even though 13 years had passed since the storm,
it almost felt like they were trapped in time midway through recovery.
Here on Staten Island Seacoast,
the community used to be tight-knit with families living in little bungalows.
Now it feels desolate.
After the storm, some residents used recovery money to elevate their homes really high.
Others took a buyout from the federal government.