Volunteers help with recovery efforts

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (WTNH) -- Debris dominates the landscape, the sidewalks, along the upscale shoreline suburb, all thanks to a group of volunteers helping with recovery efforts.

"I mean look around, it's hard to believe this is Fairfield," Lindsey Morton, an organizer of the Fairfield cleanup, said.

There are piles of flood soaked, mud coated personal items at the curb, thanks to a thousand volunteers that swarmed the area on Sunday, cleaning out sand covered yards and basements.

Their work gives displaced, distressed homeowners the time to concentrate on indoor clean up, or in some cases just rescuing what is left.

"It's incredible how people have anything left in their homes, personal belongings and such, it's amazing," Morton said.

They've cleaned out some of the damaged properties but in some cases there are no properties left.

The FEMA disaster recovery center opening on Monday behind the town's senior center, are helping people pay for temporary housing. At this point, over two thousand folks in town have already registered for help.

"With over two point seven million dollars flowing into the recovery effort most of that here is going to temporary housing and we do want people into safe sanitary and secure environments," Rita Egan of FEMA said.

The beach front is so damaged it's still closed off. Only homeowners and contractors are allowed past the police checkpoint. There is progress, sand cleared from streets, but it's a long road back.

There are a total of 7,271 Connecticut FEMA applications. 4,667 of them are from Fairfield county and 1,621 from New Haven county.

$3.97M has been approved so far. $3.7M of that is for housing.

There are 3,400 inspections scheduled and over half have already been done.