Sanctuary From Storm Is a School Again

Photo: Michael Nagle

nytimes.com - by Sarah Maslin Nir - january 22, 2013

Since the hurricane charged through the Belle Harbor enclave of the Rockaway Peninsula, the redbrick church of St. Francis de Sales has been the heart of the area’s relief initiatives, even as it was itself battered. The warped floors of its adjacent grade school’s soaked gymnasium became a sanctuary to thousands of people a day who came here for hot food and dry clothes.

It seemed that the only people to whom St. Francis was closed were the more than 500 children and staff members of its Roman Catholic school; they spent the past three months at a makeshift school in another borough, while their school — so badly flooded that police scuba divers had to spelunk through the rectory’s basement at one point — hosted the relief effort and was repaired.

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