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A few surfers tried to capitalize on the 8.5 foot wave the nor'easter blew in Wednesday night. Others came to the ruins of the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk to snap photos.

But for those who can see the Atlantic Ocean from their doors and windows, it was a fitful night wondering what damage the storm might bring.

"I was up and down looking through the binoculars to the see if this water was going to come over," Maria Curcio, whose home was damaged in Sandy, said.

"I stood at my door, because I face the ocean right here on shore front, and I just stood there looking for a wave to come over and start heading for my house because it's so much closer, the ocean, than before the storm," resident Elizabeth Gardner said.

Despite the understandable anxiety, hardly anyone was pumping out flood water, although flooding along Beach Channel Drive turned it into a pond.

People who live in the area worry that each storm will bring that awful Sandy déjà vu unless the city can properly fortify the already battered beach.

They say just building sand berms isn't enough.

"It's like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping chest wound. The beach was never properly fixed from Irene," Gardner said. "We've been asking them for rock jetties, for sand to build a seawall -- it's just fallen on deaf ears. "All this money that's going to be coming out of Washington. Are we going to see any of it?"

Who should help us? Is the city supposed to help us," Curcio said. "Too many people lost too much."

The nor'easter seems to have blown through without pummeling the Rockaways. But people here aren't convinced they'll be so lucky next time.

"We get another nor'easter, we're all going to be full of water again," Gardner said. "I'm not going to give up on Rockaway, but I've kind of given up on the government helping us."