After Storm Destruction, Rockaway Libraries Help Keep Community Afloat It was the little things, the sudden absence of everyday fixtures, that disoriented residents in the Rockaways in the days after the storm, as much as the loss of house and home. The traffic lights had gone dark. Where was one to get a prescription filled? And oh, what about books due at the library? The Rockaways still look like ghost towns. But the community libraries are there - if only in the form of a bus, parked in front of the gutted, muddy Peninsula branch. Days after the storm laid waste to four Queens Borough Public Library branches in the Rockaways, a colorful mobile library bus has hummed just outside its former location on Rockaway Beach Boulevard, offering warmth, power outlets, emergency information and books. Nearly four feet of water had smashed through the Peninsula branch's glass front, tearing thousands of books from the shelves and spewing them onto the sidewalk. Outside, sand, debris, glass and pieces of boardwalk covered the road, and the National Guard patrolled the streets. Recovery centers had not yet opened. So the library, a natural community center, stepped unto the breach. "People were just wandering back and forth in shock; they didn't know what else to do," Joanne King, the communications director for the Queens library system, said of the first day the bus opened. When they saw the library bus parked out there, they just burst into tears. The 400 Federal Emergency Management Agency fliers that the library staff had on hand ran out within two hours. The books - mostly fiction culled from the library's regular collection - quickly became popular, too, as people without televisions, Internet or school to attend turned to reading. Matt Allison, the Peninsula branch manager, said children's books were in especially high demand. People went for information on jobs, transportation, school relocations and Thanksgiving dinner, for a cup of free coffee, or just to be with other people. But now it is mostly about books. On Friday, a blue bin held returns. A woman checked Facebook on a computer as she charged her cellphone, and others sat on folding chairs, absorbed in paperbacks. (All fines were forgiven. "People have other things to worry about," Mr. Allison said.) Crystal Casillas, 21, was alternating between a werewolf romance and "A Clockwork Orange." She has been spending nearly every day in the bus, she said, eager to escape a house where there is still no power or heat and where the ceiling seems as if it might collapse. Monika Luchowska, 14, has stopped by the mobile library nearly every day too, hoping to find a favorite author among the pile of donated books on the shelves. She mourned the loss of the Harry Potter series, as well as of two other beloved books - one on gardening, one on quilting, both full of colorful pictures she used as inspiration for her computer-generated art. "I'm afraid I'll never see them again, because I don't know the authors," she said. It's really sad that all the books are gone. The library was where she went to do her homework after school and where she met several friends, who spent the whole summer there together, she said. Now those friends are scattered. Outside, Katherine Williams paused in her electric wheelchair to peruse the donated books. She has been going to the library three times a week for 30 years, she said, and soon after the storm she went by to see how it was doing. "The library is consistent - it's in the category of post office," she said. So it's comforting that the library is functioning and open. She picked up a paperback. "I'm going to hunker down for the weekend and just read myself happy," she said, smiling. At other Rockaway branches, the staff had to drive to Connecticut to buy gasoline for generators to power computers, which they used to help residents apply for emergency benefits. On Beach 54 Street, at the Arverne branch, the interior was destroyed and librarians opened a trailer to provide after-school programs. All told, the storm destroyed more than 100,000 items including books and DVDs in four of the five Queens library branches in the Rockaways, which had a combined total of more than 600,000 visitors last year. The Peninsula branch lost about 40,000 books and other materials, as well as its laptops and other electronic equipment. Branches of the Brooklyn Public Library in Coney Island, Red Hook and Gerritsen Beach were flooded and remain closed. Branches of the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, were not seriously damaged in the storm. But power failures kept many branches closed for several days. The mobile library bus in the Rockaways may be in service for weeks. The damage at libraries in the Rockaways is so extensive, officials decline to speculate at their reopening dates. "It was one challenge after another challenge, after another challenge," said George Carrera, the facilities manager for the Queens library system. But being able to provide the services made it all worth it, he said - "Even if it was out of a bus."