This summer time will mark the seventh that John Munoz’s kin will spend with out the beloved teen — whereas the dilapidated jetties they are saying killed him will proceed to dot Rockaway Seashore.
The 70-year-old “loss of life” pilings are lastly on monitor to be eliminated beginning in November, however that’s two months after lifeguards hold up their fits for one more season — and years too late, in keeping with the grieving household.
“I’m deeply saddened it’s taken this lengthy for them to take away [them],” mentioned Yenesnia Rodriguez, Munoz’s sister, to The Submit.
“My household and I’ve at all times heard the tales of Rockaways claiming lives, so we at all times knew how harmful it was,” she mentioned. “However till it hits you, you don’t notice how harmful it’s.
“The jetties have at all times been a hazard — even earlier than I used to be round. Till at the present time continues to be a hazard.”
The US Military Corps of Engineers is now lastly drafting recent plans to take away the buildings — amongst 19 clusters of jetties alongside the Queens shoreline — as a part of the Rockaway Crossovers Building Contract, which has similarities to a different proposal that had been dragging on for years.
The corps first sought to tear out the wood planks in 2020 as a part of a distinct beachfront mission however disastrously caught itself wth contractors who “by no means obtained to” the damaging pilings, mentioned metropolis Councilwoman Joann Ariola, calling the earlier plan a “bureaucratic nightmare.”
The navy expects to start in search of new crews for the work in October, with town Parks Division footing the invoice, the businesses mentioned.
If all goes nicely, the work will start as quickly as November, Ariola mentioned.
“Apart from the riptide and any kind of shark assault, [the jetties are] in all probability one of the crucial harmful elements of the water that may take the lives of swimmers and our surfers,” she mentioned.
“They turn into submerged when the tide is available in, and you can not see them.”
The Republican pol mentioned the brand new plan is a “optimistic” however that information of it’s little comfort to the households who’ve misplaced their family members within the surf.
Mumoz, 18, was simply one in all many drownings at Rockaway Seashore that has been linked to the jetties, critics mentioned.
The teenager was sitting on a jetty there with pals in July 2019 when he slipped into the tough waters and vanished.
His official explanation for loss of life was unintended drowning, however his sister mentioned his physique was coated in trauma marks from the pilings.
“[The jetty] hit him, and he knocked out, and he drowned proper there,” she mentioned.
“It by no means goes away,” Rodriguez mentioned of the loss. “You are taking a day-to-day, and also you study to take care of the ache, carry him in our hearts.
“A bit of us died with him, and we needed to begin a brand new life with out him. Even after he handed away, I simply stored listening to tales,” the sibling mentioned. “It’s now seven years he’s been gone. And it took them seven years to lastly say, ‘Hey, perhaps this isn’t a good suggestion.’
“I simply don’t take an opportunity with Rockaway. That’s the lesson I discovered from there,” she mentioned. “Coney Island, even with the strongest waves, continues to be secure in comparison with Rockaway.”
Final summer time, surfer Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers was killed by the jetties in Riis Park within the Rockaways when the leash of his board obtained tangled within the decrepit wood jetties.
Two different surfers succumbed to related fates in 2009 and 2010.
Regardless of the renewed efforts to take away the lethal jetties, neighbors stay skeptical the plan will come to fruition as quickly as November.
“That might be miraculously quick given our expertise to this point,” mentioned Paul King, the president of the Belle Harbor Property Homeowners Affiliation, which has been pleading for his or her elimination for years.
“This isn’t a type of issues the place we’re like, ‘If this pothole doesn’t get fastened, somebody might die in an accident.’ We’ve already had loss of life after loss of life. It is a actual urgency.”
