"Esther Tauscher stood outside her Staten Island home, leafing through boxes of family photos that had been steeped in storm water. She paused to point out life events -- her honeymoon, holding her baby boy in a hospital bed."

"The photos are just about all she has left. Behind her, the home where she and her family lived for 14 years was being dismantled by a masked volunteer crew that tossed out her possessions and ripped out floorboards and walls.

It was Tauscher's only option. Her house and nearly everything in it was consumed by mold.

'If the water didn't get it, the mold got it,' Tauscher said."

Eileen AJ Connelly and Katie Zezima report for the Associated Press February 3, 2013. [2]