Uprooted, Yet Again: 150 Resettled Refugees in New Jersey Were Displaced During Tropical Storm Ida

Sahar Ibrahim was home alone with her three youngest children when the unexpectedly ferocious Tropical Storm Ida dumped so much rain that the nearby Elizabeth River came for their first-floor apartment. As the water rose inside, she tried to flee, but her front door wouldn’t budge against the pressure from the flood waters.

At the time her husband, Salam Asad, was in Newark, picking up their oldest daughter from work. Those two got stuck there in their car, away from home. An Iraqi who was admitted to the United States seven years ago as a refugee because his work with the U.S. military put his life in danger, Asad feared that unlike the bombs back home, which kill immediately, his family could gradually die in the water. "I thought the world was going to end," he said. 

So Asad called his third-floor neighbors, who, like him, speak Arabic. "I told them please come to my home because my children after five minutes may die, because inside doors do not open," Asad said. The third-floor neighbors in turn called Spanish-speaking neighbors on the second floor, who mobilized to help Asad’s stranded family downstairs. 

The family climbed out of their window and into the murky water. The neighbors jerry-rigged a precarious ladder of a table and chairs, and tossed down a rope, which Ibrahim and her children tied around their bodies so they could be pulled into the second-floor apartment, to safety. Up first went the twin 8-year-olds, then the 14-year-old son, and finally, Ibrahim, to safety in the neighbor’s apartment. 

By the time Asad made his way back to an unrecognizable apartment complex at four the next morning, debris was everywhere. Cars were scattered about. He saw at least one dead body. “I come back and I say, ‘Where is my home?’” he said. All of the family’s belongings were destroyed. They’re now staying at a hotel 40 minutes away. 

Thirty people in New Jersey died as a result of Tropical Storm Ida two weeks ago. Four of those victims lived at the Oakwood Plaza apartment complex in Elizabeth, where all 600 people were displaced. A quarter of them were refugees, according to the International Rescue Committee. The 33 refugee families now without homes came from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Ivory Coast, and Sri Lanka. 

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