Hurricane Sandy Cost New York Hundreds of Homes

As inspectors finish up their post-Sandy assessments, we're reminded again of the overall effects Sandy had on New York. The city just announced that over 200 homes will have to be demolished because of the storm, and that number doesn't even include houses that were burned down or torn apart by the storm. Buildings Department commissioner Robert Limandri gave these numbers to the New York Times: 

About 200 homes will be bulldozed in the coming days, almost all of them one- and two-family houses on Staten Island, in Queens and Brooklyn. That is in addition to 200 houses that are already partially or completely burned down, washed away or otherwise damaged; those sites will also be cleared.

Limandri said that 500 other homes are still being inspected, so the number of homes that need to be razed could grow. He also explained that the rebuilding plan for a lot of the homes is unclear because of the type of the homes being demolished. Many of them are expanded-on summer homes that don't meet current building codes.

Top image: A fire fighter approaches a partially collapsed four-story apartment building in Manhattan as Hurricane Sandy made its approach to New York. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic Wire.