The furniture is still wet and the curtains are black with mold in Pura Gonzalo's Far Rockaway home, where the 89-year-old Cuban immigrant says she has throat problems and feels exhausted.
"We had just finished our first day on the subway, " Mr. Fleischner said of the storm surge that devastated the film's above-ground Rockaway locations, "pretty much demolished" the director's own home and knocked out train service for weeks.
While some residents of Staten Island have said they planned to take advantage of government buyouts of their flood-prone properties, most of the city's coastal residents from Breezy Point to Rockaway Beach have indicated they will stay at the shore.