After Sandy: Devastation and determination in Belle Harbor

The following script is from "Belle Harbor" which aired on Nov. 11, 2012. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Clem Taylor, Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson, Daniel Ruetenik, Robert Anderson and Nicole Young, producers.

This past week, snow began to fall on the shoulders of people struggling to get back up after Hurricane Sandy. Two weeks after the storm, many thousands are still out of their homes and thousands more have no power. A long stretch of the East Coast looks like it lost a war. One place still in the dark and the cold, is the New York City neighborhood of Belle Harbor.

For information on Hurricane Sandy relief, click here

It's a community of only a few thousand, but it has seen much more than its share of tragedy. A lot of its residents are cops and firemen. And many were lost on 9/11. Then two months later, in 2001, a jumbo jet crashed into the community. Now the storm has swept away a great deal of Belle Harbor, but it did not take way the grit of the people who always reach out for one another.

This was the moment, captured on a phone, when many in Belle Harbor thought fate would finally take their town.

Susan Brady: We were terrified when the fire started. Because we watched the houses on the next block go up one after another and the fire department couldn't get here 'cause the water was so high.

The water was six feet high at Susan Brady's porch when her son shot this video -- the moment the neighborhood was squeezed into a narrow space between drowning and burning.

Brian Brady: The water was breaking on the back deck, it was coming through the basement windows, the garage, the kitchen window shattered in the height of the storm and we were in a bad place.

The Bradys are an Irish American family typical for Belle Harbor. Jimmy and Brian are New York City firefighters. Patrick is applying to join the fire department. The night of the storm the Bradys did not evacuate, but Dennis was away on a trip to Florida.

Scott Pelley: I can't imagine anything worse than being 1,000 miles from here and have your wife on the phone telling you that the house is flooded and the fire's coming.

Dennis Brady: I couldn't wait to get in the car. I just could--

Scott Pelley: What did you do?

Dennis Brady: I ran to the store and got everything I could, generators, and water pumps and I just told the guy, "Stuff the car with everything you got in this place and put it in there. Here's my credit card."

Scott Pelley: Maxed out the credit card?

Dennis Brady: I called American Express and I told them, "Do what you have to do, but this stuff is going on the card."

Scott Pelley: How long did it take you to drive here?

Dennis Brady: Nineteen, 20 hours. You know, I stopped for gas and just kept going.

Scott Pelley: Straight through?

Dennis Brady: Straight through.

Scott Pelley: And when you got here what did you see?

Dennis Brady: Devastation. Total devastation.

Dennis maxed his card on more pumps, generators and supplies than he could use because he knew someone would need them. It didn't matter who -- the houses in his neighborhood have been in the same families for three and four generations.

Scott Pelley: Who lives here? What kind of neighborhood is it?

Susan Brady: This is three F's. Family, friends, and faith. Everybody cares about each other.

Dennis Brady: I live in New York City. I don't have a key to my front door and my door is never locked. And if it is I couldn't get into it 'cause I don't have a key.

Scott Pelley: This isn't the place people think of when they think of New York City.

Dennis Brady: Exactly.

Belle Harbor is down there below Manhattan, in Queens on a strip of sand called the Rockaway Peninsula. The Atlantic is to the south. Jamaica Bay, to the north, separates what they call the Rockaways from the island of Manhattan. After 1900, it was a beach resort. But over the years it settled into what were neat rows of middle class homes. The streets are piled high with sand now. The main drag has been knocked out of business. But a neighborhood is made of people and here they take care of their own.

During the storm, Mike McDonnell sheltered in a house with his neighbors when the tidal surge began filling the street.

Mike McDonnell: The windows blew in. You'll hear, pop, pop, pop, pop. And all the water came rushing in. It came right up the stairwell. I said, "I'm going to the front of the house to see how much tide is still gonna rise." At that moment, a gas line blew. And there were, there were embers of flames pouring over the house. The equal to that of a snow globe. If you shake a snow globe and you see all the white coming down. But this was raining fire.

When the house burst into flame, McDonnell wanted to lead everyone through the tide to a house across the street. He's not the kind who gives up easily. He's had 60 surgeries for skin cancer. McDonnell found that he didn't have a rope for the rescue, so he made one.

Scott Pelley: Extension cords and twine and lamp cords. So the rope led from where to where?

Mike McDonnell: The rope here went from the banister over to the tree here.

Right there, where it's tied to the tree, is how high the water was. McDonnell showed us how a neighbor on a surfboard tied the other end across the street. McDonnell used this lifeline as he carried six people, one at a time.

Mike McDonnell: I tell you, first of all, we're being chased by fire. And then the other alternative is to jump into raging water that looked like tsunami waters.

Scott Pelley: Not good options.

Mike McDonnell: This whole thing was fueled by nothing more than hope and trust.

Scott Pelley: Why was this your job?

Mike McDonnell: Because I promised them that nothing would happen to them. There's something great about this community. Everyone in this community, they're all first responders. They're firemen. They're police officers. Rockaway has a great fabric running through it, through everybody here, where they don't mind putting their lives on the line, if there's a possibility to save another.

As the fire approached the next block, Kenny Dean, who works for the bomb squad at the NYPD, and his wife Liz, decided to make a break for it with their kids, using their own rope that Kenny tied loops in, to hold their 12-year-old boy and girls, 9 and 7.

Liz: Kenny stood here on the porch and as the children came out he said, "You put your wrist in the loop and you hold on." And then they had their swim kickboard, and they went like this and one by one they jumped straight off the porch into the water.

Scott Pelley: Brave kids.

Liz: Very.

Scott Pelley: You had hesitation, didn't you? You, you were--

Liz: When I stepped off the porch, I just said, "Oh my God. I can't believe this is happening to myself. Protect us, God." And really my fear was losing one of the children, not being able to see them.

Scott Pelley: So jumping into the flood seemed like the best option you had.

Liz: Right, with floating debris, pieces of boardwalk. The water was deep enough for one of my children to ask, "Mommy, are there sharks in the water?"

Scott Pelley: Sharks?

Liz: Sharks. And I said, "No," of course. They quietly continued. They were very quiet.

Jim O'Conner could see the fire consuming his neighborhood.

Jim O'Conner: My wife likened it to the "Titanic" meets "Gone With The Wind" when Atlanta was burning.

When flames hit this house across the street. He jumped in the water to help three women escape, holding a 3-month-old over his head. They all took refuge with a neighbor until dawn.

Jim O'Conner: When the water went down, and it was just getting day out, we came over here and we turned our corner, not knowing if we had a house not standing. And there it was. It was still there.

Scott Pelley: But a lotta tragedy here?

Jim O'Conner: Well, the only thing we haven't got now is the locusts and the frogs I think over here. That's about it.

[Priest: And my friends let us pray.]

After the plague of Sandy, mass at St. Francis de Sales is said in the chill, lit by stained glass and candles. Not unlike when the book of Exodus was written. No telling when power is coming back. But the St. Francis gym has filled with coats and food and supplies sent to the Rockaway Peninsula from just about everywhere.

Sean Heeran: People from Rockaway, we're just very-- we live by the ocean. And we respect it, but we don't-- we don't fear it really.

We sat down at St. Francis with fireman Sean Heeran and James Brennan -- childhood friends who'd seen their town survive before and didn't imagine losing it to the sea they love.

Sean Heeran: You know, I had my wife, my sister, and my sister-in-law with four young children. And it was by far the scariest night of my life. God forbid, if I did have to get them all outta the house, you know, how was I gonna do it? And luckily, I didn't have to. So but-- you know, I think my brother was watching down on me.

Scott Pelley: Your brother was watching down on you. Tell me about your brother.

Sean Heeran: He got killed in 9/11 and, you know, was a great kid, very well-liked, hard worker, just a great kid

His brother was Charlie Heeran, a bond trader at the World Trade Center. Belle Harbor lost 10 people that day, five of them firemen. And among those grieving was Charlie Heeran's best friend, Chris Lawler who, himself, had only two months to live. In November, an American Airlines jet got into trouble leaving Kennedy airport and nosed straight in to Belle Harbor. Two hundred and sixty were killed on the plane, five, including Chris Lawler, died on the ground.

Scott Pelley: The plane crash in 2001 happened just beyond that yellow house there on the very next block. And so -- here it is -- in the same neighborhood that more than a dozen houses burned down during Hurricane Sandy. And three people were killed here in Belle Harbor. One woman bled to death when she was cut by flying glass and two men drowned in their basements.

Those deaths would have been mourned here at the Harbor Light Pub. The place for first dates, wedding receptions and Irish wakes. It was here 32 years, owned by a man who lost a son and now a business -- Sean Heeran's dad.

Scott Pelley: Your dad's restaurant the Harbor Light is really the center of this community it seems for most people.

Sean Heeran: A lot of good times, if those walls could talk, you know a lot of good times. It became a place where everybody could go, almost like a "Cheers," you know.

James Brennan: I'm in the restaurant business now and my first job was as an 11-year-old bus boy at the Harbor Light which I got fired from and then I got rehired as a dishwasher.

The homes they knew were ruined by the sea. The houses of Belle Harbor are turned inside out. The debris out front, same as the next house and the next, and on down the street.

Out where the kids play, the Navy landed engineers and equipment. When the military hits the beach you know there's a lot of work to do.

For a few, these are signs that its time to go -- at least for a while.

We met five moms and 15 kids going to San Diego for the next few weeks...so the kids can get in school and dads, left behind, can fix the houses.

James Brennan, who we met in the church, organized this trip. He turned his busboy experience into a chain of restaurants in California. After the storm he came back. And now he's raising money to get debris cleaned out and get electricity and heat back in.

As for the Brady boys, they're helping out on the main drag to get the businesses open. And the rest of the time they're tearing out what was lost in their own home.

Scott Pelley: Do you think of yourselves as victims of the hurricane?

Bradys: No. No.

Scott Pelley: How could you not?

Dennis Brady: We're alive. We're here together.

Patrick Brady: We're the lucky ones.

Scott Pelley: You said you're the lucky ones?

Patrick Brady: Yeah. Absolutely.

Scott Pelley: I think most people walking around this neighborhood wouldn't think of you as being too lucky.

Patrick Brady: If you walk around the block you'd say so. There's houses completely burned to the ground. And our house is still standing all we do is gut our basement.

Jimmy: You know, just things. And that's it. The big thing is that everybody is safe. The neighborhood is still here. The people are still here

Scott Pelley: Just things? The, the neighborhood is wrecked. It's freezing outside. Nobody's had heat in a week.

Jimmy: It brought us together. It brought countless other families together. It brought our neighborhood together. People have flown in from all over the world from all over the country that are from here that have families here to help its brought everybody back and grounded again.

The people of Belle Harbor reminded us of what Churchill said, "When going through hell, keep going." With every setback that is what they've done, not pausing for help or waiting for instructions. They have seen the likes of this before and they know the promise that lies beyond it.

For information on how to help the families of Belle Harbor as well as others affected by Hurricane Sandy, please go to 60Minutes.com.