Hurricane Sandy

As Sandy victims and FEMA work to resolve accusations of falsified damage estimates, some are questioning how the agency can be both a flood insurance provider and a regulator of flood insurance.

Stephen Drimalas fled his home as the storm hit, and it was badly damaged. Now he and some of his neighbors are selling their property to the state, which hopes to get people out of flood-prone areas.

Federal funds are supporting two different disaster-prevention approaches — coastal retreat, or people leaving flood zones, and coastal defense, or building infrastructure to protect at-risk areas.

As part of the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Sandy, New York's plan is to buy and demolish hundreds of homes on Staten and Long islands and let nature return as a barrier to future storm surges.

Roughly one in four cellphone towers in the path of Hurricane Sandy went out of service. It was a frustrating and potentially dangerous experience for customers without a landline to fall back on. Now, local officials and communications experts are pushing providers to improve their performance during natural disasters.