Sandy damaged houses across Long Island, such as this one in Atlantique on Fire Island.

Superstorm Sandy went down in history six months ago as one of the biggest natural disasters to hit Long Island, irreversibly changing its landscape and washing away many residents’ sense of security.

While the widespread blackouts, lengthy gas-shortage lines, catastrophic flooding and mountainous debris piles are mostly just a memory, recovery efforts are still most visible on LI’s Atlantic Ocean-facing barrier beaches that suffered the worst damage.

“Sandy to some people is gone, it’s passed,” said James Mallot, the mayor of Ocean Beach, Fire Island’s unofficial capital. “We live it out there every single minute of the day.”

The village, like the rest of LI’s Sandy-ravaged beachfront communities, is rushing to prepare for Memorial Day weekend, the kickoff to the summer beach and tourist season that pumps billions into the local economy.

Meanwhile, a breach that Sandy caused in Fire Island’s federal wilderness area to the east of the residential communities remains open, which has become a point of contention between those who blame the breach on flooding in communities near the Great South Bay and others who argue it’s cleaning out the polluted waterways.

The storm, a massive hybrid of a category 1 hurricane that merged with a nor’easter, is considered the worst to hit the region since the infamous “Long Island Express” in 1938.

Looking to Katrina for Perspective on Sandy Recovery Timeline

In the City of Long Beach on LI’s westernmost barrier island, officials held a groundbreaking ceremony Saturday to commemorate construction of the new boardwalk to replace the old one that Sandy destroyed—although the Long Beach Medical Center is still closed.

“We came together months ago to mourn the loss of our boardwalk,” Scott Mandel, president of the Long Beach City council, told hundreds of residents who gathered for the event. “Today we come together to celebrate the rebirth of it. Long Beach is coming back better than ever.”

A five-mile stretch of badly damaged Ocean Parkway on Jones Beach Island just reopened last week after contractors rebuilt the roadway’s protective dunes that were washed away. Parts of Jones Beach itself are already reopened, but Robert Moses State Park is still closed.

And in the Hamptons, some millionaires have sparked controversy by building seawalls—work that may be challenged in court—in the hopes of protecting their oceanfront mansions, The New York Times recently reported.

Signs of a comeback can be found on mainland LI as well. Camp Bulldog, a makeshift support network in Lindenhurst that was a lifeline for residents coping in Sandy’s aftermath, closed over the weekend. On the North Shore, the West Shore Road seawall is nearing completion. And East Rockaway Junior-High School reopened Monday just in time to mark the six-month mark of the Oct. 29 storm.

Also on Monday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported that its four remaining disaster recovery centers in Long Beach, Island Park, Seaford and Copiague will become Disaster Loan Outreach Centers on Wednesday, indicating another milestone in the recovery process.

“New York has made tremendous progress in the six months since Sandy,” said Michael F. Byrne, FEMA’s federal coordinating officer for Hurricane Sandy operations. “But the work is not done.”

Margaret Dopfel was driving westbound on the Southern State Parkway when she rear-ended another vehicle near exit 36 in Lindenhurst shortly before 9 a.m., police said.

Troopers found the 46-year-old woman to be impaired by drugs after she submitted to a chemical test of her blood, police said.

Dopfel was charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs, endangering the welfare of a child and driving while intoxicated with a child under 16 in the vehicle, a felony under Leandra’s Law.

The child was released to a family member.

Dopfel will be arraigned Thursday at First District Court in Central Islip.

Suffolk County police said Doris Wagner was driving a Nissan Maxima northbound on Great East Neck Road when she tried to make a left turn into a parking lot and her car collided with a southbound Suzuki ridden by John Hart at 4 p.m. Friday.

The victim was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip where he was pronounced dead. Wagner, 68, of West Babylon, was not injured.

First Squad detectives impounded the vehicles for safety checks, are continuing the investigation and ask anyone with information on the crash to contact them at 631-854-8152.

Leston Douglas was driving his Toyota Camry eastbound in the westbound lanes of the parkway when he struck a vehicle east of Route 110 in Farmingdale and fled the scene at 5:25 a.m., police said.

The 25-year-old suspect was apprehended shortly later when Troopers found him to be under the influence of alcohol, police said. There were no reported injuries.

Douglas was charged with driving while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident, driving the wrong way and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.

He will be arraigned Sunday at First District Court in Central Islip.

A driver uses their cell phone while behind the wheel.

Jacy Good learned while hospitalized on her 22nd birthday in 2008 that the Pennsylvania crash that nearly killed her claimed her parents’ lives—thanks to a teenage driver talking on his cell phone.

The White Plains resident who later dedicated her life to advocating against distracted driving shared those and other painful details during a panel discussion Wednesday at Lindenhurst High School.

“We need to change the way we think about this,” Good told students assembled at the school library. “When you are driving, do what it takes to not pick up your phone.”

Leading the discussion was New York State Sen. Charles Fuschillo (R-Merrick), who pointed to studies that found drivers distracted by their cell phones are 23 times more likely to be involved in a collision.

“Distracted drivers put everyone’s safety at risk,” said Fuschillo, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “Technology enables us to communicate with one another almost whenever and wherever we want, but it endangers lives when drivers pay more attention to a text or email than to the road ahead.”

Trooper Frank Bandiero, who was also on the panel, said that distracted drivers—20,000 of whom were ticketed by state police between July 2011 and July 2012, including 1,400 on LI—are easy to spot since they drive erratically. He said that parents need to set an example for their kids by not using their phones while driving.

A recent survey found that 58 percent of high school seniors and 43 percent of high school juniors said they had texted or emailed while driving during the previous month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

“Young people, we think we’re invincible,” said Kristen Curran, a senior at Lindenhurst High School who recently obtained her driver’s license and joined the panel. “We think we have so many more years to come, but that’s not the truth.”

President Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union address of his second term Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013.

President Barack Obama laid out more than a dozen new initiatives Tuesday in the first State of the Union address of his second term, packing an array of issues into the hour-long speech, including four—climate change, immigration, veterans and gun control—of particular importantance to Long Islanders, a few of whom were in the audience.

Obama started off flat while discussing his budget and tax reform proposals, but he worked his way up to an emotional plea for Congress to enact new restrictions on firearms sales to reduce the number of gun deaths nationwide. He sounded encouraged by current immigration reform talks among lawmakers, but the president oscilated between urging the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to negotiate a compromise on the upcoming deficit reduction plan known as sequestration, and threatening to use executive orders if Congress doesn’t act on global warming.

“We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence,” Obama said, referring in part to the Oct. 29 hurricane-nor’easter hybrid that ravaged LI and the Northeast. ”Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science—and act before it’s too late.”

The president remained vague on most of his proposals, choosing to paint a broad picture of the goals he’s setting for the year to come, but did get into some specifics while discussing immigration and, to a lesser degree, gun control.

“Senators of both parties are working together on tough new laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals,” the president said, before rallying for a vote on the bill. ”Police chiefs are asking our help to get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets, because these police chiefs, they’re tired of seeing their guys and gals being outgunned.”

Among those top cops was John Aresta, the Malverne village police chief, whose uncle was among six murdered in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road massacre. He was invited to attend by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), whose husband was killed and son injured in the same shooting spree that launched her to the national stage to advocate for gun control.

“I personally don’t see a reason why anybody would need a 30-round clip or a 10-round clip for an assault rifle,” Aresta had told Fox Business News  last month shortly after New York State passed sweeping new gun control laws in the wake of the Newtown elementary school massacre in December.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), the lone Republican among LI’s five-member Congressional delegation, wrote on Twitter that he was disapointed in Obama’s lack of focus on unemployment and deficit reduction, but co-authored an op-ed in Politico expressing support for ensuring background checks for all  gun purchases, with the exception of gifts between family members or temporary transfers for hunters. He noted national estimates that only four in 10 gun buyers are subject to such checks.

New York City got two mentions. Obama first touted the heroic nurses who evacuated newborn babies from the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan during Sandy, signaling Menchu Sanchez by name. She was seated next to First Lady Michelle Obama. He later extolled the benefits of P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York and IBM, where students graduate with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in computers or engineering—a model he wants emulated nationwide.

The emphasis on improving education to better the economy dovetailed with his reasons for supporting immigration, a hotly debated issue on LI, where undocumented Hispanic immigrant day laborers have repeatedly been victims of Suffolk County hate crimes in recent years.

“Our economy is stronger when we harness the talents and ingenuity of striving, hopeful immigrants,” Obama said, emphasizing that reform must include stronger border security, cutting waiting periods, attracting highly skilled engineers and ”establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship—a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and … learning English.”

But some immigration issues are easier to solve than others. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) invited as his guests Dania and Nick Marvos, a Little Neck couple who were in the process of adopting a 1-year-old boy named Ari from Russia until two months ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning American adoptions of Russian children. The move was widely seen as retaliation for a recently passed U.S. law punishing Russian human rights violators.

“Waiting for news to see if we will be allowed to bring our baby home has been one of the most trying times in our lives,” Dania Mavros said in a statement released by Israel’s office. ”Devastating does not capture the emotional roller coaster that we are enduring every day.”

Congressman Israel said he is negotiating to help the couple complete the adoption process despite the new Russian law in an attempt to save their son-to-be from growing up in an orphanage. Thousands of other cases are also in jeopardy.

Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) invited Dina McKenna of Lindenhurst, whose husband, Sgt. William McKenna, died in 2010 of cancer caused by his exposure to toxic fumes from burn pits the military used for disposing of hazardous waste in Iraq. Bishop had laws passed to curtail the use of burn pits and require the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve its treatment of soldiers exposed to them.

“All veterans whose health may have been affected by toxic burn pits must be accounted for and given the health care and support they have earned,” Bishop said in a statement.

Obama’s nod to veterans came as he promised to better defend against cyber attacks, end the more than decade-long war in Afghanistan “by the end of next year,” prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons and isolate North Korea for its provocations in testing nuclear weapons potentially capable of being fitted on inter-continental ballistic missles. He reiterated plans to strengthen U.S. missle defense to block such an attack.

The commander-in-chief also made clear that while the military will not be sending large numbers of troops abroad for Iraq-style occupations, he vaguely referred to special operations forces that will continue to hunt al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and wherever else they may be hiding. He made veiled reference to the continued deployment of predator drones despite recently renewed controversy over their use to kill American citizens working with terrorists, such as Westbury-native Samir Khan, the al-Qaeda propagandist killed in U.S. airstrikes alongside militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

“Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans,” he said.

Robert Garelick was allegedly under the influence of alcohol when he performed dentistry on a patient Monday.

And you were afraid of dentists before this story.

Suffolk County police Monday arrested a Lindenhurst dentist for allegedly conducting a dental procedure while he was under the influence of alcohol.

The dentist, 57-year-old Robert Garelick, was arrested around 4:30 p.m. Monday after police received a complaint that he was allegedly drunk on the job. When First Precinct officers arrived they determined that Garelick was under the influence of alcohol while performing dental work on a patient, police said in a news release.

Police didn’t say what prompted the call but noted that there was concern about the dentist’s physical condition.

Investigators declined to elaborate on specifics regarding the case.

Garelick, a Melville resident who is licensed to practice dentistry by New York State, was charged with reckless endangerment. He is scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip on Tuesday.