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 observe to be eliminated beginning in November, however that’s two months after lifeguards grasp up their fits for an additional season — and years too late, in response to the grieving household.
“I’m deeply saddened it’s taken this lengthy for them to take away [them],” stated 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 stated. “However till it hits you, you don’t understand how harmful it’s.
“The jetties have at all times been a hazard — even earlier than I used to be round. Till today continues to be a hazard.”
The US Military Corps of Engineers is now lastly drafting recent plans to take away the constructions — amongst 19 clusters of jetties alongside the Queens shoreline — as a part of the Rockaway Crossovers Development 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 special beachfront venture however disastrously caught itself wth contractors who “by no means obtained to” the damaging pilings, stated metropolis Councilwoman Joann Ariola, calling the earlier plan a “bureaucratic nightmare.”
The navy expects to start looking for new crews for the work in October, with town Parks Division footing the invoice, the businesses stated.
If all goes properly, the work will start as quickly as November, Ariola stated.
“Apart from the riptide and any sort 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 stated.
“They develop into submerged when the tide is available in, and you can not see them.”
The Republican pol stated the brand new plan is a “constructive” however that information of it’s little comfort to the households who’ve misplaced their family members within the surf.
Mumoz, 18, was simply certainly one of many drownings at Rockaway Seashore that has been linked to the jetties, critics stated.
The teenager was sitting on a jetty there with mates in July 2019 when he slipped into the tough waters and vanished.
His official reason behind loss of life was unintended drowning, however his sister stated his physique was coated in trauma marks from the pilings.
“[The jetty] hit him, and he knocked out, and he drowned proper there,” she stated.
“It by no means goes away,” Rodriguez stated of the loss. “You are taking a daily, 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 saved listening to tales,” the sibling stated. “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 stated. “Coney Island, even with the strongest waves, continues to be protected 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 may be miraculously quick given our expertise to this point,” stated Paul King, the president of the Belle Harbor Property House owners Affiliation, which has been pleading for his or her elimination for years.
“This isn’t a kind of issues the place we’re like, ‘If this pothole doesn’t get mounted, somebody might die in an accident.’ We’ve already had loss of life after loss of life. It is a actual urgency.”
