Tolland Residents 'Gut and Pump' Homes of Hurricane Sandy Victims

Life in Tolland has moved on since Hurricane Sandy swept through in late October, but the residents of Breezy Point, NY are still reeling from the after effects of the storm.

A small group of Tolland residents, many of them members of the Tolland Fire Department, have devoted their time and energy to helping out those who suffered the most from the storm, as volunteers in Operation Breezy: 'Gut and Pump,' which is led by FDNY member Phil Pillet.

Tolland resident and retired Danbury, CT firefighter Mike Pascuzzi traveled to New York a few weekends ago with fellow volunteers and photographed the gut and pump process.

Pascuzzi said that the operation aimed to save the houses that were marked as structurally sound from being torn down months later as the result of mold.

"If the mold wasn't removed from a green-tagged house now, a few months down the road a house could become red-tagged," he said. Red-tagged houses in the Queens neighborhood are scheduled to be demolished.

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Pascuzzi said that teams of approximately six volunteers would remove all of the wet material from a house. Teams would shovel out furniture, debris, insulation, plasterboard and floors from homes. 

A smaller group of FDNY members would go around and pump out the basements as they were gutted, Pascuzzi said.

Breezy Point suffered extensive water damage during Hurricane Sandy, but also lost more than a hundred homes from a fire that consumed several blocks of the neighborhood.

"Everywhere you walked, there was some level of damage," Pascuzzi said. "There was no building untouched."

Pascuzzi also noted that although many of the volunteers were first responders, students, church members and residents from all over the country also made the trip to help out those in need. 

Click through the photo gallery above to see Pascuzzi's photos of the Operation Breezy: Gut and Pump operation.